Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
The Bounty was shaking slightly from the stress being put through her engines as they chased down the distance between them and the battle.
It wasn’t a long journey from Kervala Prime to the nearby nebula that shared the star system’s name, but every second still counted. So they were taking the engines past the redline.
Klath knew it was a risk that they were taking, given that the ship’s redoubtable engineer wasn’t onboard if anything were to go wrong. But his command instincts told him that it was an acceptable risk. They should get ample warning from the computer if the stresses were getting too high, and it was imperative they made the best time possible.
As he sat in the command chair, he couldn’t help but think back to the last time he had taken a ship into battle, when he commanded the IKS Grontar. A battle that had ultimately turned out to be the needless slaughter of an undefended freighter. And one that ultimately cost him his place in the Empire.
He silently resolved that this was going to be a very different mission. Not one where someone’s honour would be lost forever, but where someone’s would be gained for the first time.
“Phaser cannons are fully charged,” K’Veth barked out from his side, “Micro torpedo tubes are all loaded.”
Klath nodded back with a proud look, and she felt another surge of blood lust in her veins. She had settled into her new role entirely, all thoughts of her former shame and distrust of Klath’s motives now forgotten. Her eyes were almost glowing with the strength she was feeling inside.
Klath returned his attention to the forward view, gaining succour from his own blood lust. He was sure that this would be a glorious battle.
Tempering his growing confidence in their quest, Natasha chimed in a warning from the engineering station.
“Just bear in mind that we still have some secondary systems offline for repairs. We’re not gonna have a lot of backups to work with.”
“Nice report, Lieutenant Buzzkill,” Jirel quipped from the pilot’s seat.
In the command chair, Klath took a moment to fire a stern glare at the Trill in front of him. “The pilot should keep his focus on his work when we are at battle readiness,” he grunted, “A lesser commander may tolerate a level of…inane behaviour from his crew. I do not.”
Natasha stifled an amused smile at Klath’s deadpan delivery, as Jirel turned around to eye the Klingon’s prideful face.
“Don't go getting too comfy in that chair, ok, buddy?”
Klath didn’t answer him. He merely gripped the armrests of the chair tighter and stared grimly at the view ahead, as the Bounty sped on towards the source of Denella’s distress call. The overworked ship shaking with stress all the while.
Slowly but surely, the pink and purple mass of the nebula in front of them loomed larger.
* * * * *
It hadn’t taken long for the Martan to relocate the Kendra.
The Pakled ship moved slowly through the swirling gases of the nebula, and fired both disruptor cannons at the small orange shuttle.
“Incoming!” Denella cried out from the co-pilot’s seat.
Erami was already on it, swinging the ship away and barely evading the two deadly balls of green energy that fizzed past the hull. In the same movement, she was able to bring the Kendra to bear on the port side of the Martan as it lumbered through a pitched turn of its own.
Denella didn’t need a second invitation. She fired off another few spits of phaser fire, which impacted hard on the Martan’s shields. Though it barely slowed them down.
“We’re not making a dent,” she growled in frustration, “May as well be firing witty insults at them.”
“They’d never understand them if we did,” Erami replied, as she banked the Kendra up and over the top of the other ship’s rectangular midsection, “I’m gonna try and circle in close around them, make it hard for them to target their weapons.”
Just as she said that, she was forced to wrench the Kendra on another nauseating turn to the left to avoid a fresh disruptor blast.
“Hard-ish,” she added quickly, “If you’ve got any more ideas, this’d be a good time to use ‘em.”
Denella ignored the three new alert warnings that flashed up on the panel and danced her fingers across the controls. “Ok, it’s a long shot, but I’m gonna channel power from every system we’re not using right now into that phaser cannon. Give it the supercharger treatment.”
Erami nodded in understanding and turned the shuttle around again, checking her readouts on the enemy ship as she did so. “Looks like their shields are weakest around their starboard three-quarter section. Gonna line you up for a shot at that.”
The Kendra shook again as a plasma relay at the rear of the cockpit exploded in a fiery blast, only being quelled by the despairing hiss of the automated suppression systems.
“Ugh, she’s falling apart!” the Bajoran cursed as she wrestled with the controls.
“She can take it,” Denella affirmed, her long-honed engineering instincts giving her a sixth sense for when any ship was close to breaking point.
Eventually, Erami swung them back around, bringing them to bear on the exact part of the Martan that she had indicated.
“Ok, have at it!”
Denella nodded, mentally crossed her fingers, and pressed the firing button.
A surge of energy shot out of the single phaser cannon in the Kendra’s nose. One far greater than the cannon itself was designed to handle. The energy impacted on the Pakled ship’s shields and caused a crackle of energy to cascade out across the surface in a chaotic pattern of light that illuminated the already-colourful scene inside the Kervala nebula.
“Yes!” Erami yelled out, “Got ‘em!”
As soon as her celebrations began in earnest, however, the entire section of controls in front of Denella immediately fizzed and crackled, sparks flying everywhere, causing the Orion to jump back in shock to avoid a nasty burn. The Kendra shuddered once again from the latest misfortune to befall it.
“Warning,” the shuttle’s dispassionate computer voice intoned, “Power overload in main weapons control.”
“Wondered when you’d chime in,” Erami grunted mirthlessly in the direction of the computer voice as she glanced at the recovering Orion, “How bad?”
“Ugh. That one shot just fried the entire phaser array! Really wasn’t designed to handle that much power. And if we’re not careful, it’ll spread to—!”
Before she could get any further, a further burning shower of sparks burst out from the wall behind them, as Erami tapped her controls fruitlessly.
“We just lost main power completely! Warp drive offline, impulse engines are cooked!”
“Goddamnit!” Denella growled in frustration, “Power overload must’ve cascaded through every system on the ship. Stupid idea!”
“Hey,” Erami smiled across at her as the Kendra continued to fall apart all around them, “At least we got in one good punch. Always gotta get in one good punch, whoever you’re fighting.”
Her supportive words didn’t entirely quell Denella’s frustrations. She was still kicking herself for going all-in on the phaser plan. Which had brought them a bit of time, but at the cost of entirely crippling the shuttle. She watched helplessly as the fizzing and the crackling on the Martan’s temporarily overwhelmed shields began to subside and the larger vessel began to right itself.
“I take it that we’re too late for a friendly surrender?” Erami added with gallows humour.
Even as she spoke, she saw the twin disruptor banks either side of the Martan’s spherical forward section glowing ominously with fire.
“I think we’re past that point,” Denella offered simply.
She wondered if this was it. No warp drive, no impulse, and a pair of Klingon disruptors attached to a Pakled ship about to obliterate them.
“Screw this,” Erami cried out, “Shunt all available reserve power into the thrusters!”
Even as the glow from the disruptors reached its peak, Denella got the transfer done, though she was sure it would be too late.
Erami jabbed her finger down on the Kendra’s thruster controls, sending the remaining auxiliary power into the tiny engines at the same time the Martan fired. The sudden burst of momentum propelled the shuttle almost out of the path of the blasts, but not entirely. The second disruptor shot caught the Kendra with a heavy glancing blow.
Denella felt herself falling, and caught the sound of a bone snapping somewhere as she landed on the deck with an awkward thump. She caught sight of Erami sprawled in a similarly undignified heap to her right.
The view from the cockpit window was one of chaos, as the shuttle tumbled out of control through the gas cloud. A new cacophony of alarms sprung into life, as another plasma relay blew out at the rear of the cockpit.
“Warning,” the computer’s voice calmly intoned, “Antimatter containment failure is imminent.”
“Ugh,” Erami groaned as both women dragged themselves back towards the controls, “That guy never shuts up!”
Denella forced herself back into the co-pilot’s seat and went to work, as Erami clambered back into her own seat and tried vainly to level off their course. “Trying to lock down antimatter storage,” she called out, “It’s on the redline!”
“Great,” the Bajoran replied, “So even if the Pakleds don’t kill us, my own ship’s gonna do the job for them!”
Denella concentrated all her engineering skills into the crisis, even as Erami managed to arrest their spin and get them close to stability.
“Ok,” the Orion puffed eventually, “Containment stabilised—”
She stopped as the two women saw the Pakled ship bearing down on them again, disruptors glowing. This time, there was no time for evasive action.
“Crap,” Erami said simply.
Denella was about to wholeheartedly agree with her analysis, when a new alert suddenly flashed up on her console.
“Wait! There’s another ship coming in. It’s the Bounty!”
The reassuringly familiar sight of the Ju’Day-type raider filled the view ahead of them, as the Bounty swept between the Martan and the Kendra and took the full force of the disruptor blasts for them on their own shields.
Erami stared in shock, before glancing over at Denella.
“See?” the green-skinned woman smiled through the smoke of half a dozen burned-out plasma relays, “Told you they’d be here.”