by David Smith
Crewman Chen Jihai answered. ‘Sorry, sir, they’ve raised shields. We can’t lock on to them.’
On the screen, Dolplop switched to a visual just as Hoover’s phasers struck the shields of one of the gigantic Tana battleships. They flashed ineffectually against the ship’s protective energy fields and Dave’s mouth went dry.
With a distinct note of panic in his voice, Janus said ‘All Tana vessels are charging weapons . . . and targeting us.’
‘OH NO!! They must think we fired!’ groaned Dave.
The whole Bridge team watched in horror as the screen came alive with hundreds of bright flashes as every one of the Tana ships opened fire simultaneously.
Dave screamed ‘SHIELDS TO MAXIMUM!!’ and fought back the urge to order evasive action, knowing that to do so would consign Hoover and her crew to destruction.
He knew that the Tana’s weapons were nowhere near as effective as Federation phasers, and that the Tana sensors wouldn’t be able to gain a lock on the stealthy Tiger. However, with the sheer number of weapons being fired manually, some were bound to find the mark, and once one of them found the mark, that would give others a target to aim for. Even a cruiser as strongly-built and heavily-protected as Tiger could only survive the onslaught for a matter of minutes.
The ship shook violently as the first of the Tana’s huge lasers struck home. The lights went out, and one of the consoles at the rear of the Bridge exploded, throwing an unfortunate crewman across the room.
Dave was about to ask for an update on Hoover’s status, but Janus beat him to it. ‘Hoover’s in trouble! They’re hitting her too, and her shields are collapsing!’
Dave called the Transporter Room again, but before he could speak, Jihai yelled ‘We’re on it! Got six back already, buy us as much time as you can!’
Dave closed the channel and let his engineers get on with their job. ‘Janus, can you extend our shields to protect her?’
‘Only if we get closer, sir, and not for long’
‘Lyle, get us closer to Hoover!’ Dave shouted.
Among the violent impacts they felt the subtle surge of the reaction drives as Lyle closed the gap. ‘I’m already on it!’ she gasped.
‘Shields at seventy percent, sir, but we’ve got Hoover covered now.’
Now lower and closer to the other ship, Tiger was being hit by shots aimed at the Hoover. The ship shook again, and then again as more Tana lasers found their mark. Nervously Janus stated ‘Shields at fifty-two percent. We can’t take much more of this.’
Dave called the Transporter Room again. ‘How are we doing?’
Before they could answer, the ship shook violently again and then several more times as more lasers struck home. The lights dimmed, another console exploded and Janus yelled in alarm ‘Starboard aft shields gone!! We’re not protecting Hoover anymore!’
Dave could only watch in horror as more Tana lasers lanced through the ether to catch the immobile Hoover, which shuddered then exploded in a cloud of flame and debris.
The Bridge fell silent for an instant, before Dave yelled, ‘Helm, get us out of here now!!’
They felt the ship rock under them as Lyle overrode safeties and pushed the reaction drives to maximum output and beyond. She threw the ship this way and that, trying to evade the barrage of laser fire directed solely at Tiger now.
The ship was still shaking as the lasers found their mark, but now other sounds added to the cacophony as alarms sounded off: ‘Hull breach, Deck 7, fire, Deck 7, fire, Deck 14, hull breach, Deck 19, fire, Deck 19 . . . ‘
Dave held his breath. That was the main engineering deck!
At that instant, Chief Arjen Kluis at the Engineering console shouted ‘Fire in engineering! Power relays WP-1A and 2A have failed. Warp-drive off–line!’
Dave called the Engineering Deck and heard a muffled voice that sounded very much like Commander Romanov, the ship’s Chief Engineer. She was apparently wearing a respirator, and Dave realised that was bad news. ‘What’s your status, Olga?’
‘Not good, Commander. We’ve taken a hit on the starboard side that penetrated the hull and damaged the secondary plasma manifold. The surge blew out both the primary and secondary relays to the Starboard nacelle. We have many burns victims including Jonsen. We’ve sealed the breach, but we’ll need about ten minutes to replace one of the relays and get the coils in the nacelle back on line.’
‘We may not have ten minutes Commander!’
‘Doing our best sir, but we’re in bad shape down here. You’ll have to excuse me, this needs my personal attention.’
With that the comm-link closed, and Dave knew he’d get no more feedback until the job was done.
‘Lyle . . . ‘
‘I heard, sir, taking evasive action . . . ‘
The young Lieutenant threw the Tiger into a complex series of turns, ignoring the ships tactical computer and following her own instincts.
Janus shifted power between shield emitters, keeping most power on the shields facing the enemy fleet, but as he did he warned ‘We can’t keep this up sir, the Tana are splitting their fleet. They’re going to bracket us and once they do, there’s no way we’ll be able to avoid all the incoming fire.’
‘Just keep trying!’ Dave yelled while watching the red dots on the view-screen splitting into smaller groups and trying to manoeuvre around Tiger. As he did so, he noticed more red dots appearing further back along the screen. ‘Who the hell is that?’
Janus was too involved trying to keep Tiger’s shields from collapsing completely and it was Dolplop who answered. ‘It appears to be a Sha T’Al fleet, Commander.’
Dave froze. He wasn’t any more certain of the Sha T’Al’s intentions than he was the Tana’s. Before he could say anything, Chief Obote at the Science Station yelled ‘They’re charging weapons! They’re manoeuvring to engage the Tana vessels!’
Dave breathed a sigh of relief as the Tana vessels that were trying to intercept them suddenly changed course to counter the threat of the incoming Sha T’Al fleet.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Lyle immediately pushed the Tiger further away from Todot Hahn, seeking the safety of the darkness of interplanetary space.
In the moment of respite, Dave called engineering. ‘How’re we doing Commander?’
When the tiny Ukrainian replied her voice was clearer. ‘We’re about there, sir. Atmosphere is back to normal, plasma manifold is patched, power relays are changed out, and we’re cycling through the initiation checks before powering them up.’
‘Excellent work Commander. The situation has changed but we’re still at Red Alert, so stand-by.’
‘Are the Tana no longer a threat?’
‘Doesn’t look like it, but we have a gaggle of Sha T’Al ships to contend with now, and we’re not sure of their intentions either.’ He glanced at Grosvenor who shook her head to confirm that the Sha T’Al hadn’t responded to her communications.
‘Turning out to be quite a morning isn’t it?’ sighed the little engineer.
Dave didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries and turned his attention back to the tactical situation on the main view-screen, while stabbing at the button to call the Transporter Room. Chen Jihai, didn’t need Dave to ask the question. ‘We got eighteen out, sir. We had four over here already, but ship’s roster showed thirty crew in total. Worse still, that damned lawyer is down here handing out business cards and asking the survivors who’s at fault for their injuries!’’
Dave cursed under his breath. The Feds had lost eight lives for absolutely no reason at all. Damn their stubbornness! He didn’t have time to mourn and turned his attention to the task of trying to keep his own ship intact.
His mood wasn’t improved when Yeoman Mirella Verrechia entered the Bridge. Being an ex-model, she cat-walked rather than walked, and shimmied her way down the steps and across to his chair. One leg relaxed and an elegant hand rested on her other hip as she passed over a pad, managing to look cool, elegant and bored all at the same
time.
Dave took the pad, already thinking he didn’t have time for it. He sighed. Instructions from the Captain could normally be complied with in seconds.
‘What the hell’s going on?
I’m trying to concentrate here!
Ps. You have the Bridge.’
Dave added the logs from the last week, appended the results of Capt B’Stards professional standards audit and at the end he added;
‘Ps. Tana have attacked Federation vessel. Eight dead.
Pps. In case you hadn’t noticed you’re suspended!’
Dave passed the pad back to Yeoman Verrechia who turned and shimmied off with as much attitude as she could muster with her skirt tucked into the back of her thong.
Dave turned his attention back to the screen. The tactical computer had now coloured the Sha T’Al vessels in purple, and data began popping up alongside each dot. Janus was reviewing the data as it came in.
‘Wow!! They’ve got the big guns out, sir! There are twelve vessels that appear to be the same as the types we encountered at Hole in the mirror universe: it’s a mix of heavy cruisers and smaller scout vessels. As well as that there’s another vessel at the heart of the group, much bigger again. We’re looking at close to three hundred thousand tonnes . . . ‘
‘Good grief!!’ moaned Dave ‘Does everyone in this damned sector out-gun us??’
They’d seen the Sha T’Al heavy cruisers at work in another universe. They were fast, agile, well-armed and would make very dangerous opponents.
Dave winced. He remembered only too clearly the destruction the heavy cruisers had visited on the analogue of Hole in the alternative universe they’d only recently escaped from. Tiger was still stealthy, which gave them an advantage, but she was massively out-gunned: In terms of pure combat capability any one of the Sha T’Al heavy cruisers would be a match for a Constitution class ship such as Tiger.
Such a vessel nearly twice their size was almost certainly more than a match for the Tiger, and as well as the five biggest vessels, there were eight other smaller vessels too. Dave wasn’t superstitious, but thirteen was an uncomfortable number just now.
Dave watched as the Sha T’Al vessels manoeuvred, but to his surprise, only the largest vessel approached the Tana fleet. The smaller vessels moved into a higher orbit and stood off some distance away.
‘What are they doing?’ Dave muttered to himself, but Janus at the Tactical Station had an answer.
‘They must have spotted the plasma we leaked from the damaged engine sir. They’re spreading out to screen the big-ship. She must be the flagship of the group.’ He checked his console, ‘Yep, every scanner on every vessel has gone live and they’re all pointing in our direction. They know we’re here, but can’t get a fix on us ‘cause of the loaves.’
Dave breathed a small sigh of relief. The loaves had nearly done for the ship, but this wasn’t the first time their caramelised remains had protected Tiger from unwelcome enemy attention.
Before he could decide on a course of action, the smaller Sha T’Al vessels began to accelerate, gaining altitude and moving further and further away from their flagship. ‘What the hell are they doing?’ whispered Janus.
The Tana saw the movement and attempted to take advantage, accelerating towards the isolated Sha T’Al flagship.
Isolated now, she was a sitting duck and the Tana battle feet closed the gap rapidly. The largest Tana vessels opened fire, and Janus switched to a camera view to see what was happening. The ship’s telescopes zoomed in to reveal the sleek, ominous lines of the Sha T’Al flagship. She was constructed from elegant curves, unlike the brick-like Tana vessels, and brought to mind some great cat, coiled and ready to pounce. Even as they admired her form, the microwave lasers of the Tana vessels found their mark and the ship’s shields fluoresced as hundreds of megawatts of energy struck them and boiled away into the ether.
‘Tough ship.’ murmured Janus.
Bolt after bolt of microwave energy struck home, but none seemed to have any visible effect.
‘Why aren’t they fighting back?’ Dave asked himself, but as he spoke, he saw a large portal open at the very front of the vessel, through which an ominous blue glow appeared.
Dave was about to ask Chief Obote to analyse the structure but as he did, the Sha T’Al vessel turned, heading directly towards the leading Tana battleship. A huge bolt of boiling seething blue energy exploded from the unidentified portal and arced towards the Tana vessel. The blinding glare of the energy caused the screen to dim down so much that it was all they could see on the screen, until it found its mark.
It struck the Tana battleship amidships, and to their amazement, the Tana vessel’s shields failed instantly in a burst of plasma flares. The main body of the bolt stuck the huge, heavily built hull of the battleship and sliced through it without stopping, blasting a huge hole straight through the vessel and bursting out into the void beyond.
Dave and the bridge crew could only watch in horror as the Tana battleship died in agony. The hull twisted and buckled under its own momentum and then sheared completely in half, spilling its contents into space in a pyrotechnic display of severed plasma conduits and ionised gases. Smaller explosions ripped though the shattered vessel, near the hull breach at first, but then seeming to bloom from every port and orifice in her hull.
Finally the screen turned white as the rear end of the vessel exploded. Her anti-matter containment fields had failed, leaking their deadly fuel on to the matter of the ship’s structure. Huge blasts of x-ray radiation rocked the other vessels of the Tana fleet and sent the forward half of the Tana battleship spinning away into the atmosphere of the planet below.
The Bridge was silent, but the ship was suddenly buffeted as the blast of x-rays rocked the Tiger even though she was much, much further away than the Tana fleet.
Red Alert alarms sounded as the radiation lashed at the hull. Almost lost in the noise Janus said quietly ‘She’s gone sir, no survivors.’
‘Tactical’ growled Dave, as much because he couldn’t bear to look at the Tana ship’s death-throes as to see what the current situation was. Janus changed the display on the main view-screen, where nice, safe little dots showed no sign of horrific destruction they’d just watched. Aside from one small grey dot, spiralling out of control through Todot Hahn’s atmosphere.
The Bridge was still silent apart from Janus’ steady ongoing analysis of the tactical situation. ‘Tana fleet is taking the hint, sir, they’re disengaging. Looks like they know they’re outclassed, the fleet is scattering. Some of them are very slow away, I guess they were damaged by the blast from the first . . . victim.’
Dave mentally shook himself and concentrated on the task in hand. ‘Any comms from the Sha T’Al?’ he looked in turn to both Commander Grosvenor and Lieutenant Shearer but both just shook their heads. Dave pressed the call button for engineering. ‘Are we good to go to warp speed Commander?’
‘We’re good sir, but don’t push too hard, we skipped some calibration cycles on the replacement power relays.’
Dave closed the link. ‘Dolplop, Lyle, get us the hell out of here.’
Chapter 8
Tiger’s senior staff gathered in the briefing room. Everyone was subdued and there were worried looks all around the table as Dave summarised their position.
‘We’re in deep shit.’
There were murmurs around the table before Dave continued. ‘Aside from our internal issues with JAG, the Feds, the Revenue Service and the Union, we’re also in the middle of disputed territory in an interstellar confrontation that’s just gone very, very hot.’
‘We’re cut off from the Federation. All comms into this Sector are down and we have to assume that’s due to action by either the Tana or the Sha T’Al. My understanding from Commander Grosvenor is that Third Fleet is still tied up in Sector 193 and hadn’t despatched any support before we lost communications.’
‘The Sha T’Al and the Tana Empire are now openly hostile to each other
, and apparently us as well, although I really can’t understand what they’re fighting over. For lack of a better description, it seems to be a dispute over broadcasting rights.’
‘I can only see three options from our perspective. We continue our attempt to mediate between the hostile parties, we pick a side and attempt to help that side prevail, or we get the hell out of here and let them shoot each other to pieces. Any thoughts?’
ASBeau spoke first. ‘If what we saw was any indication, any shooting won’t last long. I’ve analysed the data from the battle and it looks like the Sha T’Al employed a very heavy fusion cannon similar to what we saw in the mirror universe. The Tana don’t have anything that can match that. It’s going to be a real one-sided war.’
Izzy shook her head. ‘Don’t be so sure. The Sha T’Al ships are technologically on a par with our own, maybe even a little more advanced, but they’ll be massively out-numbered. I’ve spent a lot of time with the Sha T’Al and from what the elders tell me, that fleet represents pretty much everything the Sha T’Al can muster. They can beat the ships they meet, but the Tana can probably field ten times as many ships, and build many more, much faster. If the Tana lose this fleet, one of their other fleets could be heading into the Sha T’Al home-worlds completely unopposed. In terms of sheer military muscle and economic capability, the Tana still have a massive edge.’
ASBeau didn’t look convinced. ‘So are you suggesting we side with the Tana?’
Izzy rolled her eyes. ‘There’s more to this than picking a bloody winner! Both sides are being driven on by dogma, not diplomacy. We must continue to mediate . . . ’
Olga Romanov interrupted. ‘Continue to mediate?? My understanding is that we haven’t even begun to mediate! They won’t talk to us, let alone each other! Tiger’s still not fully battle-ready. We should make a tactical retreat and let our politicians try to sort out this mess.’
Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara, the ship’s Science Officer didn’t like the inference. ‘We’re Starfleet: We can’t just walk away and let innocent people die.’