Shadows - Tam Otlan

© 2001 by Federation Space and the author Tam Otlan

USS Ishtar

At the tactical station behind the Command Center, the incoming message tone sounded. The Bolian officer manning the station quickly scanned the transmission and cursed under his breath.

“Captain, we are receiving a distress call from the cargo ship USS Steadfast. She is reporting a core breach in progress. They are three minutes away at maximum warp. But their ship is slightly over the line into the Neutral Zone.”

Captain Julia Benton leaned forward in her chair and addressed the Helm officer.

“Ensign Strauss, plot a course to the Steadfast’s position and engage at maximum warp.”

“Aye sir.”

The ship spun on its axis and leapt into warp, the stars streaming by on the viewscreen as the Captain began issuing orders.

“Sickbay, this is the bridge, we are on an intercept with a ship in the process of a core breach, prepare for casualties. Engineering, assemble teams for repairing a warp core breach. Cargo Bay, made room to take on possible heavy cargo, we are going to be aiding a ship in distress and I want to be able to salvage their goods if it’s possible.”

Julia didn’t need to wait for acknowledgement from the various departments, she simply needed to give them their orders. She had the best crew in the fleet and they knew their jobs. It made commanding this ship an easier experience than she had had aboard other vessels. It seemed as though some crews didn’t know how to plan a birthday party properly.

As her display came to life showing that the departments she had contacted were ready, they began to near the position that the cargo vessel had called from.

“Slow to impulse, raise shields and began scanning the area for the Steadfast. We want to get her crew off as quickly as possible and try and save the ship. I would prefer to not have to ferry them back to a starbase, we just began this patrol.”

As they dropped out of warp, there was no sign of any ships, especially not a large cargo carrier. The bridge crew leaned over their consoles, each trying to search for any sign of the Steadfast, or her debris. Lieutenant Commander Seton at OPS was the first one to report.

“Captain, there is no sign of any ship here. I’m not detecting any drive plasma, no proof of an anti-matter explosion, not even a simple ion trail. I don’t think there is anything here.”

Julia didn’t like the way this was playing out, and instead of waiting around in the Neutral Zone, she decided that they would get away from here as fast as possible. She glanced at her First Officer, who nodded once in agreement and called out to the helmsman again.

“Ensign Strauss, bring us about and get us on our own side of the Neutral Zone. We can do some more scanning from there.”

“Aye sir.”

The Ishtar swung about and again went to warp. They quickly crossed into Federation Space and came to a relative stop. Julia didn’t want to take the chance of sparking an interstellar war by sitting in the Neutral Zone and sending heavy scans into the direction of the Romulans.

“Anything yet on long range scans?”
“Negative Captain. I believe that we have been sent on a fool’s errand. Someone is likely playing some kind of joke on us.”

The utter scorn that was emanating from her OPS officer was almost enough to make her laugh. Brikars didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor, especially not when it interfered with their work. Thumping her hand on her armrest a few times, she decided that they had wasted enough time on this foolishness.

“Very well, I think we have done everything that can be expected of us. There is obviously not a ship in danger here. But we should still report this to Starfleet in case we missed something. Helm, take us back to our original heading and engage.”

“Captain! Two ships de-cloaking dead ahead!”

Julia’s eyes snapped automatically to her viewscreen as she watched the form of two Romulan warbirds shimmer into existence.

“Maximum power to shields! Ready weapons, but do not lock onto them, we don’t want to provoke a confrontation. Mr. Roq, hail them.”

“Frequencies open Captain.”

“Romulan vessels, you have entered Federation Space and are in violation of the treaty of…”

[Federation vessel, we have no interest in what we are in violation of. We monitored your ship entering the Neutral Zone and directing your scans directly towards one of out outposts. This is an act of war. If you surrender your ship now, we will spare your crew. Otherwise, you shall be destroyed.]

“Outpost? We are unaware of any outpost in this area. We were responding to a distress call from a cargo ship. I implore you to not cause an incident that could lead to hostilities between us. We are more than happy to back off and go about our patrol, but you must leave our space.”

There was silence for several seconds, and Julia was sure that they were deciding how they could leave the area without appearing to be running from a single light-cruiser. She hoped that they would listen to reason, and they could avoid a deadly confrontation, but her duty was to get the Rommies out of their space.

Suddenly the viewscreen lit up with a blinding flash as their disruptors slammed into the smaller ship. Several of the bridge crew was thrown from their seats as the Captain called out for them to return fire.

“Captain, shields down 28%, casualties coming in from the forward sections of the primary hull.”

Hit after hit smashed into the ship’s saucer section as Strauss tried to back them off from the advancing ships. They managed to break away from attack long enough for Lieutenant Roq to return fire.

“Direct hit on both ships, no damage, but they have begun to move around us into a pincer maneuver.”

Julia managed to get herself seated properly and glanced around the bridge. Seton of course had not moved from his position, as he fed targets to the tactical console. She wasn’t sure if Roq was getting them or not, but she knew Seton wanted to make sure he was helping them get prime targets on the warbirds.

Her First Officer was lying flat on the deck and wasn’t moving. She tried to see if there was an obvious wound but she didn’t detect any blood. Then she noticed that his neck was bent at an impossible angle. She prayed that she was imagining it, but she didn’t think she was.

Looking back to the screen, she could see the torpedoes leaving the underside of their ship to smash into the warbirds. Checking over her shoulder, she saw that Roq was gone, but a young Ensign whose name she didn’t remember was hunched over the tactical board and was firing as fast as he could acquire targets, there was a body lying at his feet. She guessed that it was Roq.

“Helm, evasive maneuvers, keep us away from their weapons. Tactical, continue to fire at will, try and knock out their defensive systems and maybe we will get away from this in one piece.”

Seton’s voice broke through her orders as he continued to work his board. “Captain, I have a suggestion. It will take too long to explain, but I think it would improve our chances dramatically.”

“Do it!”

Leaning farther over his console, so that his face was nearly touching the surface, he began re-routing several power sources and feeding them directly into the deflector dish. He had read a history book about the Enterprise-D using this against a Borg cube and having no success, but he didn’t think the Romulans would see it coming.

Using several command overrides that he had as Second Officer, he was able to alert Engineering to what he was doing and continued to make the necessary adjustments to create the beam that he hoped would smash apart one or both of the warbirds with a single burst.

[Warning, core overload in eight minutes twelve seconds.]

“Seton, what are you doing? I didn’t plan on you blowing the ship up!”

“Trust me Captain, I am not going to blow the ship up. My weapon will be ready in one minute.”

The ship rocked around them as they continued to receive every weapon the Romulans had.

“Shields down to 14% Captain, we won’t be able to hold much longer. There are hull breaches on the engineering section, and we have at least forty fatalities according to Sickbay.”

Forty lives taken for no reason. Julia had experienced death in her time in Starfleet, as had probably every person who served aboard a starship, but it still damaged her to her core that people had died while she was in command.

“How long Seton?”

“Preparing to fire in seven seconds.”

An explosion from one of the Romulan torpedoes knocked the starship hard to port and most of the bridge crew was sent to the floor. Seton continued to countdown over the shouting of reports.

“Shields are gone! Forward phasers at 47%! We are venting plasma, and there are multiple hull breaches. Engineering reports that we are losing containment. Life support is failing!”

Lieutenant Commander Seton kept his voice calm. “2…1...Firing now!”

A white beam from their deflector dish lashed out at one of the warbirds and blasted through the double-hulled ship, sending debris in every direction. The other warbird spun away from its twin and went to warp. The Captain jumped from her seat and headed for the OPS console to look over Seton’s shoulder.

According to his readout, the deflector dish had overloaded the minute they had fired, and the dish itself was destroyed. They would have no protection against simple dust should they go to warp, but at least they had managed to knock out one of the enemy ships.

“Are they gone?”

“Yes Captain. They ran when their mate was destroyed.” Tapping on his console, he looked towards the screen.

“Captain, there is a level twelve shockwave heading this way from the destroyed ship, their AQS drive apparently didn’t react well with our weapon. If we don’t get the ship away from here in…nine seconds, we will die.”

Seeing that the helmsman was unconscious, or dead, Julia sat at the console and began trying to get their impulse engines fired.

“Offline, damn.” She entered a heading and pressed the pad that would send them to warp, and noticed that once again the system was showing as offline. Checking and rechecking her board, she saw that even the maneuvering thrusters would not fire. The ship had taken too much damage to sustain any of its propulsion systems.

“I’m sorry Seton, but we aren’t going anywhere the ship is adrift. We managed to make one of those bastards pay though.”

“Don’t worry Captain, we won’t be adrift for long.” He paused and considered his own sarcasm for a millisecond before turning to face his Captain. “It has been an honor to serve with you Captain Benton. I’m sorry I didn’t think of that deflector trick sooner. We might have survived if I had.”

She smiled and allowed a single tear to roll down her cheek. “You did fine Commander, see you in the next life.”

The shockwave slammed into the tip of the saucer and knocked the ship ninety degrees, so that she pointed straight ‘up’ in space, before ripping through the outer and inner hulls and obliterating the ship and crew of the USS Ishtar.

The Commander of the warbird that had escaped smiled slightly. Their phony distress call had worked better than they had hoped. Although the Raptor had been destroyed in the process, the mission was still a success. He ordered the ship to maintain its speed and course, they would have several days of repair before they could attempt this maneuver again.