February 16th 2372, Stardate 01265, Sector 019, Alpha Quadrant, Cardassian Held Territory:
The U.S.S. Mirthless moved through space running silently, no power running through her systems, moving forward on perpetual motion only. She had been cruising at Warp 8.725 when the final countdown had been initiated to shut down the systems. At the Federation Cardassian border she had shut down all her systems and had coasted across and into hostile territory. If they had been caught they would have fried their navigation systems and claimed complete ignorance of their position. They would likely never be heard from again, considering how Cardassians were known to treat their prisoners. The Mirthless was not flying with her usual crew, but had been commandeered by Command as soon as she had come out of dry dock for this mission, and staffed with a total volunteer crew that had been culled from people awaiting new post's or close to retirement and had a few months left to serve, no long term commitment necessary for this mission. They were performing silent surveillance and recon on the current Cardassian-Klingon conflict, to provide intel with the current Cardassian problem that Starfleet was facing. Starfleet picket line vessels were easy prey to Cardassian warships, especially when it was 2 or 3 against 1.
They were not the only vessel out here, or so the Captain had been told. There were always back-ups in place, just in case their mission went badly. 1 year ago a single mission such as this one would have been unheard of, but after the disastrous handling of the Federation-Klingon conflict, Starfleet Command was trying to boost up all of its divisions to prepare them for the likely Federation-Cardassian conflict too come. Nothing was expected to actually happen on this mission other then watching these hidden refueling depots and the few bases the Cardassians kept maintained in this nebulae. If all went well however, they would never know about any other Federation ship's out here, if there were any. They were silently running at one quarter impulse down the Cham'Chala system. Cham'Chala was a trinary star system, 3 suns in relatively close orbit of each other, their gravity's constantly pushing and pulling at each other, the orbit's in a constant state of flux. One of them was a red dwarf and it was orbited by 2 smaller yellow sun's that swung about it, tearing out huge gash's of plasma from the red dwarf that were flung out throughout the system, which over thousands and thousands of years had created large clouds of volatile gas's that were barely navigable. But there were huge pockets of wide open space as well, and the Cardassians had been using some of these pockets as staging grounds in their two front wars. The constantly changing gravity's of the star's, and the way that affected the system made for some hazardous navigating, but it also made their mission all the easier, given the fact that their vessel was not equipped with a cloaking device. They were a high priority mission, but not quite that high.
At this point in the war, the Cardassians have begun to suffer truly heavy losses, and supply lines were being broken all along the Cardassian front. The Klingon Star Empire was throwing warships against the Cardassians in huge numbers, willing to sacrifice even their own borders in offensive attacks against the original instigators of this war. Klingon's were not known to take their battle's lightly, and once provoked, generally stayed at war until either they or their enemy were at least close to being wiped out. The Federation had an entirely different policy on the matter however, and was seeking to extricate itself from the war if at all possible. But at the same time, proper measures had to be taken in order to ensure that proper precautions were being taken, which was why they were here. Monitoring Cardassian troop level's and movements as they slowly glided through the system, her ablative armor canceling out all radar emissions that could be beamed at it, as well as most other form's of sensor detection. Combined with running in dark mode, their total output in emissions were almost zero percent. A ship would literally have to be within actual visual range, with someone actually looking out a viewport and finding them. So they were relatively safe here, although the tension aboard the ship was palatable. It was a high stress situation, behind enemy lines, carrying extremely vital information that would save lives when and if it got back home. But for the moment, it was just 47 men and women aboard one ship, no power to run anything that would make the time pass more pleasantly.
Although the Mirthless herself was not using any of her many systems, it was on the outside of the hull that everything was happening. Their were simple digital recorders that ran off of battery pack's that drew in solar power, in such a small BTU amount that it would be virtually undetectable, unless someone were going out of their way to search for that type of energy consumption. The type of security that someone would have to be running in order to come up with anything was rarely used because of its high energy cost's and low effectiveness rate. Cloaking device's were not exactly common, and as far as the Captain knew, the only system he knew of that used Heuristic Control Network's to monitor its system was Sector 001, or Earth…home. The digital devices were constantly wearing out, not having been designed for use in hard vacuum. Half of his crew was constantly suiting up to go out and repair the devices. The other half had been assigned to going over the footage with personal PADDS running off solar cells and trying to spot and catalogue anything of importance. This in most cases was like picking a needle out of a haystack. It was frustrating to the Captain to be seemingly wasting his time. His crew was able to spot little to nothing because of the low quality that the recordings were able to produce. But they had their orders, and none of them would even think to question those orders. There were much smarter people then them that were planning this strategy out. And if not, then they would all die anyways, so they had little to worry about either way. They just all wanted to know that they were doing the very best job that they could. Otherwise there was no need to be out here. Space is hard, what they did was hard, and they all, each and every one of them had a passion for what they did, from a transport tech, to a maintenance crewman, to his very command crew. It was extremely rare to find someone out here who didn't want to be, though it did happen. Even less so in Starfleet. Out in the commercial fleets, people were recruited all the time because the life on whatever backwater planet they were living on, plain and simply sucked. As civilized as the Federation was, and aspired to be, there were times where great atrocities could be committed, and had been, in Federation space. Captain Chassay Lammem had received quite a few demerits back in the academy for not taking certain orders that had been given to him at the time. Looking back now, he was sure that those demerits were why he had been promoted through Command. Originally he had gone into the Corps of Engineering, and had completed his training there. When he had graduated, he had received a Comms from the head of Starfleet Corps of Engineering. When he had reported in, he had found out that the Commander had gone ahead and enrolled him in Command school. When he found out what had happened he had been furious. 4 years of engineering school, and now he had to endure 2 more. He had had no interest in Command. He loved working on computers and had aspired to be Chief Engineer of any ship in the fleet. Such had been his dreams. Now he lived in an entirely different world. Command school had changed him, for the better he thought. And his knowledge of ship systems was now indispensable to him, allowing him to run missions like this one in a dual role. With so many systems suffering damage from having to transverse the Cham'Chala so many times, combined with having to constantly repair the recording systems put a strain on the trained personnel available. So the Captain split his 18 hour days into Command and Engineering time. In his Command role he reviewed all the compiled information and made out duty rosters and everything else that came along with a command such as this one. In Engineering he was able to have a bit of fun however. Dismantling and repairing systems was still a joy for him, and he almost considered it downtime.
The captain was down in Engineering, down being a relative term, considering that the Bridge was perpendicular to him in Engineering. He was alone down here, a cavernous space for one human being to occupy by himself. He was busy cleaning off and preparing Plasma emitters that helped mask their maneuvering thrusters when they needed to activate them, which occurred every three days or so, when they needed to swing about and go back through the Cham'Chala system. The computer was reading him statistics on everything that the computer kept track of, from air consumption, to food, to the molecules composing the space around them, and on and on. He needed something besides cleaning these emitters to keep his mind fully occupied, and between these two things his mind was able to keep itself fully occupied and productive. His mind entered a trance and the statistics flowed into his mind, his ship and the space around her being built mentally, until he was as up to date as the ships computer itself. Until the Red Alert went off. The Captain cursed, because his careful compilation was shattered with the knowledge that the Mirthless's shields were now up, and that main power was running through her EPS conduits, lighting them up like a searchlight in the darkness and fog of the surrounding space. "Captain to the Bridge", and then the circuit was dead, and when he tried the turbolift system, which should theoretically be running now, it to was not working. That meant that the crew was concentrating on bringing back up only certain systems, and the only ones more vital then internal power, was external power for shields, weapons, and external comms. Which likely meant that they had been found somehow. The Captain thought all this and much more as he made his way through the maze of Jefferies tubes, picking his way through the correct one way tubes that would take him directly to the bridge.
When he did arrive at the bridge, through an access panel placed directly in the middle of the bridge, his crew was strangely quiet, but they immediately began to call out reports in order of importance as he clambered out of the tunnel and sealed it behind him, and made his way to his command chair directly behind him. As he sat down, the first thing he did was log in, transferring power from his X.O. to himself, who had just vacated this chair as he came in and was now sitting to the right of him, logged into his own station and pulling up command tree's and inputting orders silently as the other crewmen continued the reports. And though he heard these reports as they were being said, it was the main view screen directly in front of him that had his full attention since he had seen it. Yes, the crewmen were giving him the numbers he needed to understand the full scope of the situation, but he could clearly tell what was going on just by looking at the screen. On it, he saw an enormous array of ships, and one of the stats that he now possessed was that it was a fleet of 1400 ships, all Cardassian. They were arrayed in a defensive position, with their heavier ships behind them and lighter ships maintaining a wide perimeter around the main fleet. These ships must have all arrived within the past few days, for the Mirthless had been through this area not 5 days prior. Never before had he seen a fleet of this size, and he had seen the vids of some of the largest encounters in history in the Academy. What he couldn't understand was why they were spread defensively. The Cardassians were the aggressors in both wars that they found themselves in, and this fleet must be a full quarter of their entire fleet. This meant that either these were all the spare ships that they had, or that they had already begun to consolidate their space and forces.
The Cham'Chala sector was of strategic importance along with a few other sectors of Cardassian border planets, because it had all the qualifications an invading force would look for, going either way, for it would allow either the Klingons or the Cardassians to sneak a force just as this one into the others space, and begin carving out a nice swath of new territory, before their bases of power could jump and react. This was the very reason that they had been placed here, in order to monitor this specific area. But the question of why the Cardassians were arrayed in an extremely defensive posture explained itself as he listened to the report that the ensign at the sensor station. "Sir, right after we flew in this Grid, Grid 719, we detected these vessels massed at this Cardassian depot. But there's another fleet incoming, I picked their sensor readings up by chance, riding the carrier wave off of one of the Cardassians own sensor buoys to enhance our signal. The other fleet is…well, its huge sir. About 2,000 vessels in all, although I cant get an exact reading on how many, or what class of vessel they are, sir." And that explained that much. Captain Lammem sat comfortably in his command chair, surrounded by his X.O. and the conn and sensors directly in front of him, and the viewscreen taking up the forward wall, while behind him, a bit separated from the rest of the bridge, the rest of the Bridge crew bustled about, monitoring the reactivating systems and performing Red Alert checklists. He had all the time in the world to decide what to do, relatively speaking. With the massive energy signature being given of by the fleet out there, he had no worries of them being detected out here, a few thousand kilometers out. Besides that that fleet had plenty of its own problems coming at them. He weighed his options carefully and silently, not asking for advice or opinions from the crew, which he normally encouraged. This was a delicate situation, and he wanted a few moments to consider all the variables. They certainly could not interfere in any way, nor would he even choose to. That certainly was not a Starfleet battalion out there, that much he could be certain of. His job out here, his ships job was to monitor the situation and gather intelligence. What was about to occur out there could change the course of both wars, and the entire situation that the Federation currently found itself in.
Within a few minutes, the Klingon fleet entered into view, breaking through the gas's surrounding the sector. And there they were. Thousands of ships, mostly attack cruisers aligned in careful formation, 3 huge diamond wedges that were spreading out to encompass the entire Cardassian Fleet. The cruisers were light, not to well armored, but running heavy on weaponry. Klingon shields were no match for the power of the Cardassian disruptor beams, and this was the first item that the Captain noted. The Klingon fleet would know this, and they would move quickly, using the sheer amount of firepower available to them. There was no question as to the outcome of this battle however. The Cardassians were so far outnumbered, there was absolutely no way for them to gain a victory here. If they had had any sense whatsoever, they would retreat and give the ground in a strategic loss, but this would never happen. The Cardassians were too proud, and there was very little ground left to give anyways. If this sector was lost, the way to Cardassia would be wide open, and the Captain would bet his command that this massive Klingon force was only the vanguard, and when the way was clear, the true fleet would jump in, use this stage to refuel, and allow the combat worn vessels from this fight to rearm. "Are we getting all of this, enhanced and tagged?" he snapped this, almost without meaning too, but this was so vital, he didn't even think of it. "Sir, yes Sir!" came the reply from Lt. Benson at comms. They were all tense, not just himself, and he forced himself to relax, his legs crossing in front of him, and his fingers interlacing themselves, leaving the Captain viewing screen quietly and comfortably. There was not much else to do. "Is anyone showing any sign that they have picked up our signals?" The ensign that was manning the sensors was quite, so engrossed in what he was doing on his board that he hadn't even realized the Captain had spoken to him. Chassay stood up and made his way over to the sensor station, quietly coughing behind the ensign's ear, who immediately jumped an inch, his face burning red in embarrassment. "Sir, sorry sir…, I was checking all frequencies.." The Captain cut him of. "Has anyone noticed us?" "No Sir…and again, sorry sir". "Don't let it happen again ensign; otherwise I'll have you of my bridge. This is a tactical situation, and if you're not all here, I need someone who is." The ensign, who was maybe a year out of the Academy gulped and then nodded his head. The Captain turned about and made for the command deck, standing in front of his chair as he continued to watch the screen, the ensign hurriedly turning back to his post.
The Klingon ship's began to slow, holding their tight formation, and then with such a shocking amount of energy being released that the light's on the Mirthless flickered, the viewscreen image going out for a few moments, the Klingon fleet all unleashed spread's of photon torpedoes and quantum torpedoes from their maximum range, all homing in directly on the defending Cardassians, who immediately broke formation into some prearranged screening formation. But by then the Klingons were swooping in, unleashing more torpedoes and phaser blasts as they swooped through the still rearranging fleet. It was something to awe at, at least from this distance anyways. It seemed like one gigantic blur from where they were, and there was no way to focus in on any one point now, later there would be plenty of time to analyze the entire battle, vessel by vessel. This information would have to be taken to Starfleet Command immediately after the battle, as soon as they could possibly sneak out of here. This might be awhile, depending on the outcome of the battle, which had truly only just begun. The Klingons had just finished their second volley and were swinging around to quickly regroup, so quickly that there was no way for the Cardassian fleets to regroup in time. While both the Klingon and Cardassian cultures were militaristic, the difference was that the Klingons were warriors at heart. The troops manning the Klingon vessels were trained and veteran troops, who had served for years, while much of the Cardassian force were raw recruits, having just been "recruited" into the Cardassian military. All Klingons served in their military at one point in time, and it was a sign of whom they were that the huge majority stayed in the service. Generally, it was a dishonor to the family name to retire from the service before accomplishing some major feat, unless one was moving into one of the more necessary sciences that were needed for the continuation of the race. As he pondered all of this, the Cardassians were finally able to form some semblance of a line, each separate set of units divvying up to take on a Klingon ship or two. The strategy didn't make sense. It seemed that the Cardassians were fighting a holding action, not a defense for their home. Either way, the next time the Klingon ships came about, the Cardassians were ready, and they unleashed a firestorm of disruptor beams and missiles that destroyed all their targets. A wise strategy, rather then firing randomly, three or four Cardassian ships all targeted one Klingon cruiser, systematically destroying ships one at a time. The Klingons did the opposite and after about 20 minutes of this, the Cardassian line again broke into chaos, single ships once again giving chase to others, and the view again became to large to see. A report popped up from the sensor station, routed from the main sensor control room on Deck 3. Of the 1000 Cardassian ships that had started out, 400 remained, while the Klingons had lost but 200 ships of their 2000 ships that they had arrived with. And both forces seemed to be moving under the assumption that they had back up coming, although to the Captain, and to the rest of the bridge crew, the Cardassian force seemed to be tiring quickly, unable to re-establish formations, and were slowly but surely being torn apart by the fast moving Klingon assault fleet.
Within about another quarter hour the Cardassians began to retreat, having lost another 170 ships. And they were leaving in a hurry, their thrusters leaving huge wakes in the gas behind them that spiraled lazily outwards, the golden gasses spilling backwards against the Klingon ships in close pursuit behind them. The Klingons had sent about 600 ships, maybe 700 ships in hot pursuit of the rest of the Cardassian force. It was a risk, it could easily be a trap, and the Captain was proven right all to quickly. Cloaked weapons platforms suddenly appeared right as the Klingon fleet flew through a heavy bank of gas, and when they emerged a few seconds later, the weapons platforms opened up, targeting with extremely high powered disruptors that sliced through shields like butter. Massive parts of destroyed ships went flying into others, taking out about a third of the fleet that had gone ahead, and the rest quickly regrouped and headed back to the main fleet, leaving the shattered ships in their wake, still spewing their o2 and humanoid bodies as they spun around. But this was a trick that could only be used once, and the Klingon fleet split into three, sending a thousand cruisers to circle around the area that held the weapon platforms and made quick work of them now that they were visible and locked into the scanners. The two thousand ships left behind the sister fleet and made headway for the still retreating Cardassians, sending shots from far out of range in their eagerness to take on the enemy.
Suddenly the Cardassian fleet, what was left of it anyways, slowed down and then spun about, forming a solid defensive line. But the Klingon fleet outnumbered the Cardassians 3 to 1 and charged headlong into the Cardassian line and straight through, leaving ships from both sides trailing along what had been the battle line. A report popped up on his command center monitor, from the sensor station. There were huge power fluctuations coming from all sides of the nebula, to big to be a fleet, and to small to be an electrical or plasma charge running through the system, which was known to happen in nebulae such as this one. He turned to the ensign manning the bridge sensor station and asked him for a status check on the report he was looking at, which was almost 2 minutes old at this point. "Sir, the anomaly is getting closer to us, and to the fleets out there. Something is definitely closing in sir, and it's big. The Captain turned his eyes back to the viewscreen, and his eyes slowly widened in concern. The 700 Klingon vessels that had attacked the Cardassians were hidden further out in and were hidden by the gasses. But to long had passed, and they should have turned about by now and gone in for another attack run. He accessed the control for the main monitor, bypassing the sensor ensign and enlarged that section of the screen. The whole crew of the bridge had their eyes glued to the screen, for there were flashes of blue and red lights flaring brightly. Suddenly their were pieces of ships, huge pieces, of Klingon vessels that had been sliced cleanly through and were still flickering with power, their ships still processing the fact that they were dead. Suddenly there were hundreds of small ships darting out of the cloud, swarming through and over the Cardassian fleet, ignoring them and flying straight to the main Klingon fleet, which remained stationary where they had entered the system. The Captain had no idea what type of ships the new vessels were, and the computer came up with no registries. "I need ident's on those ships." Two stations sprang into action, the communications and sensor's, both sending the available info to their respective main stations aboard the ship to try to piece it together. "Sir, we have ships inbound, coming in from right behind us. We have less then a minute sir". The Captain frowned, but he had been expecting this once he had seen the unknown ships pop out, combined with the size of the power surges they had detected. There must be thousands of them out there, holding formation, with the attacking ships but a probe. "I want a full 30 second burn of thrusters, get us into the nearest cloud of gas, and then shut down the systems immediately after the burn." The ship sprang into action, her in system thrusters pushing them to a little less then a quarter impulse before the burn was over. Lieutenant Wax at the conn didn't shut down the thrusters as ordered right after, but instead used the thrusters as makeshift brakes for exactly 5 seconds so they wouldn't coming flying out the other side of the cloud in a few minutes. Only then did he shut down his entire station, with the rest of the ship following suit. The ship powered completely down within a few moments, the crew having been prepared to do so at any moment anyways. The only power left running was the life support systems. "Turn on the outer cameras and bring up the relevant views on the forward screen. I want everyone monitoring and recording, this information is of the most vital importance. And good work Lieutenant Wax, that was good thinking with that move". The Lieutenant turned and nodded to his Captain, obviously please with his performance and the Captains having noticed it. Of course, it was a direct violation of orders, and normally it would be unacceptable of course, but he had likely just saved the ship in a fashion. There were a few views up on the monitor, in a type of overlay of what they could see out of the cameras. And what they did see was thousands upon thousands of the small swarming ships making short work of the Klingon fleet, which was trying to retreat and hold a formation of what was left of their ships. But they were surrounded and overwhelmed, probably about 10 to 1, likely more. And there were more of those ships pouring into the sector every second, thousands upon thousands, a seeming endless stream of them. There were a few flashes of light, Klingon ships being destroyed every second, hundreds of thousands of lives being extinguished by the second now. Within a few more minutes there was nothing left, not a single surviving Klingon ships. In the meantime, the 300 or so Cardassian ships remaining had returned to formation, not a battle ready one, but a loose holding position. They were obviously not expecting a fight with the new ships, who themselves were now organizing themselves into fleets. And there was enough for many of them, 20 in all, a thousand ships each when they finished rearranging, which went surprisingly quick, less then a half hour.
A hatch popped open to the left of the Captain, who waited coolly to see who emerged. It was the chief of stellar cartography, one of the divisions under sensors. The chief was carrying a data PADD, and he handed it wordlessly to the Captain, breathing a quick "Sir", his eyes glued to the forward screen and the ships on it. The PADD had little information, but what was on there was enough. "Are you sure about this? How did you get this information?" "Sir, we downloaded our recent updates, but we never had a chance to update our sensor package before we originally entered the system on our recon mission". The Chief hesitated for a second before continuing. "You signed off on the order yourself sir". The Captain did vaguely remember having signed that order, but there was nothing that could have been done then, and he was just happy to have the information now. "Good work Chief, you're dismissed." The Chief left the way he had arrived, to make the laborious journey back to his post on deck 17, and to share what he had seen on the screen with his crewmates. The information would spread throughout the ship quickly, and he was for once grateful that they couldn't communicate with anyone, for this was information that needed to get straight to Command. And so it would. He sat back, taking his time to make the decision, but when he thought it through, he knew what had to be done. Whatever this was, an invasion force, or just the tip of one, it had to get to Command ASAP. He pulled his Command station towards him, leaning heavily against the station. He input the branches of commands he wanted executed and then sat back, nothing left for him to do. The ship powered up, minimal systems only for exactly what they needed. The ship began to back out of the cloud, making its way directly out of the system to circle about and head back to Federation space. Right before they broke free of the gas, they began to stop abruptly. Mr. Wax spoke. "Sir, sorry sir, but there's more of those ships out there, and they have a perimeter set up, sir". The Captain mentally cursed, for this complicated things in the worst possible way.
They would have to make a run for it, they had no choice. Flashes of the battle were running through his mind, the furious bursts of energy flinging back and forth across space, the ships tumbling about like broken toys. Then the image of his own ship, his 2nd ship, a Steamrunner class vessel, so small and seemingly fragile, the second smallest class of ship in the fleet. But she was well armed, and she was relatively quick. But she was no match for the sleek little ships that were darting about out their. Again, he input a command stream, and somewhere in the bowels of his ship a whole array of probes was now being loaded up with all the visual data they had acquired and were then launched, into multiple directions, and 3 headed towards Federation space. It was 3 days journey at high warp, and for the probes it would take at least a week to reach Deep Space 9, the closest Starbase. This started the mental countdown in the Captains head. In four minutes, the probes would exit the nebulae and would be visible on the scans of the fleet out there. So they waited, the crew quiet and patient at their stations. Everyone was well aware of what was going on here. He had no need to make some speech to invigorate his crew. They all understood the stakes, the lives that they were protecting by being here, on this ship, doing what they were supposed to be doing. And their orders were crystal clear in a scenario like this, and even if their orders hadn't outlined this, they would feel obligated too. The command tree he had input was available to the whole crew to see, and he watched as Lieutenant Wax prepared at the Conn, Ensign Hobbes at Sensors, Ensign Marquez over at comms, and Lieutenant Tripoli at tactical, all quietly going about their business. He was starving at this point, but it was too late for anything like that now, there was less then a minute left in the countdown. So he sat back and crossed his legs, while his X.O. left the bridge to head to the secondary tactical bridge on Deck 27, the second to last furthest away from the bridge. He wouldn't make it there in less then twenty minutes, but they would likely eventually need him there. 30 seconds. Lieutenant Wax began to overload the anti-matter containment, to the squawked audio protests of Chief Harris in engineering. The Captain cut that off quickly though, not in the mood to pander to the Chief at the moment. If they got out of this, he would apologize. Otherwise, he would be forced to apologize in hell. Their were worse things that he could imagine. Then the Lieutenant cut the engines in, suddenly and abruptly slamming the crew backwards, temporarily overloading the inertial compensators. And then they were out of the gas clouds and they were at high warp speed and climbing as the captain watched on his monitors. When they jumped into Warp, it was to Warp 7.3 and every few seconds it crept a percent higher. And then the sensor alarm began flashing on his right hand monitor, and he saw that there were four ships in hot pursuit, quickly overtaking them, while the computer informed him that they were powering up their weapons systems.
He cursed again, this time aloud, and he didn't even have to think about the next set of orders that he input, he just did them, there was no time to consider the consequences. Right as he finished inputting the orders, the ship began to swing around, the stress of doing so at such a high speed making the very rivets that held the ship together groan. The Captain smiled, for it seemed that Lieutenant Wax had been prepared for a maneuver such as this one, or something equally drastic. Then their came a resounding thump that sounded through the entire ship, and he checked to see what had happened. In the command branch that he had ordered, after turning the ship about, a runabout was supposed to have exited from the rear docking bay and make way for Federation space. Unfortunately, the shuttle had jumped the gun, kicked in their impulse engines a split second to early and had been smashed against the ceiling of the bay, ripping open the rest of the cargo hold to vacuum and sending the shuttle tumbling out of control at warp speed. The Captain was saddened by the loss of the two crewmen on the shuttle, but it seemed more and more likely that his whole crew would die today, so he gritted his teeth and pushed these thoughts from his mind, and then ordered a shuttle to launch from the other docking bay in the rear of the ship. These were the only two shuttles aboard, and the Captain held his breath until the shuttle, named the Argonaut was making its way at warp 8.7, its maximum attainable speed. All of this took about a half a minute, and when the shuttle was away, the Captain ordered the Lieutenant to drop out of Warp and engage the shields and prime what weapon systems they did have. An urgent comm. came up from the docking bay, and when the Captain acknowledged the call, the face of a frantic looking Cadet appeared on the screen and he began shouting, loudly and quickly. "Captain, Sir! There was no one here to put in the shuttle, and the doors Sir!! The doors had to be manually opened from the bay, the automatics haven't been powered up yet sir!!" It took the Captain a few precious seconds to realize what this Cadet was telling him. "Are you telling me…that there is no one on that fucking shuttle Cadet?" The cadet turned a new shade of red, one the Captain had certainly never seen before and began to stammer out his reply. "I loaded it with all the necessary information and set the course as ordered to DS9 sir, and I have a remote control over it for now sir, as well sir". The Captain thought for a second and nodded. "Better then nothing Cadet. Good Job". Then he shut down the link, a few short seconds before the first disruptor beams lanced out from the Dominion ships directly ahead of them, the viewscreen automatically dimming against the flaring light produced by the direct hits. The ship barely trembled under the first few hits, but they were more powerful then they seemed. With three direct hits, the shields had been reduced a full 35. He ordered an attack run, attack pattern Zeta Alpha Zulu, which would hopefully bring them right past the four Dominion warships for a direct strafing run. The plan worked well, the Mirthless shooting right by them as they tried to come about. His ship unleashed all her weapons at once, targeting the first and third ships with successive phaser blasts and then dropping a spread of three photon torpedoes per targeted ship. Everything was happening very quickly, the Mirthless making a run in the opposite direction of her launched runabout with the Dominion ships following in her impulse wake. One of the ships was completely disabled with its warp reactor about to overload, and the other targeted ship was still trying to limp after them launching some form of tracking torpedoes after them although they were well out of range. The other two ships was an entirely different matter, for they were now unleashing their own hell fire after the fleeing Starfleet vessel, letting loose with all they had. The Captain was forced to watch as his aft shields went from 70 plummeting down to zero within the space of a minute. All too quickly, the hits were chewing into the aft hull, and the Captain ordered the ship to swing around again, yet again traveling backwards, flying through space with what was left of her forward shields taking the hits now. The Mirthless had time to launch one more volley of missiles and phaser blasts before the Dominion ships unleashed their final volley, bringing the shield down with just a few short disruptor bursts.
The Captain braced for the next few hits, hits that would likely take out the bridge as well as most of the ship, holding unto his chair for dear life for shots that never came. Instead, one of the four small ships accelerated, bringing it just over the still moving Mirthless. The ship's weapons systems flashed and the ship rocked, slightly, a few times as the Jem'Hadar ship targeted specific systems on his ship, first the engines, then weapons and finally life support, leaving them with what little air was circulating throughout the ship. Then with a quick shimmer, his bridge was full of Jem' Hadar soldiers, all armed to the teeth with disruptor rifles and hand disruptors, as well as a brutal array of close range weapons. His bridge weapons Chief, the only armed bridge crew fired a phaser blast and then a quick second shot, taking out two of the Jem'Hadar before he was brutally cut down by soldiers that had beamed into the rear of the bridge and the Captain could hear the sickening impact of slicing knives against human flesh and the last gurgle of the Chief. Only then did he turn around to see what had happened, and before he had a chance, he was brutally turned back around and shoved back into his chair. There was a disruptor emitter placed right in front of his face, and so he sat waiting. One of the Jem'Hadar soldiers, the largest one, and the one who was standing directly in the center of the bridge, gazing up at the main viewscreen spoke. "Keep only the Command level crew alive. Kill the rest." And then their was multiple streaks of disruptor fire through the bridge, and the Captain knew that that order was being carried out through his whole ship as well. His fury boiled over and he began to shake with anger, and the last thing he remembered doing was shoving the disruptor out of his face and slamming his palm into the nose of the soldier in front of him, driving the bone satisfyingly into the brain of the Jem'Hadar, and then all he saw was a flash of light, then an incredible pain in his side, and then the darkness came creeping over him in one long quiet wave, wiping all his concerns from his mind until his body slumped down across the deck and there were no thoughts at all on his mind.
One Week Later, Sector 001, Earth, Starfleet Headquarters
Starfleet Intelligence Report on Sector 019, as delivered to the President of the Federation and its Security Committee:
As the President and Committee already know, the loss of the Mirthless is much less troublesome then the apparent fact that her crew was all killed other then Command level, as communicated to us by the Jem'Hadar in the video showing Captain Lammem and his senior staff all badly injured and being held somewhere in Dominion territory. For now, Starfleet Intelligence's recommendation is to list the U.S.S. Mirthless, registration N.C.C 9874 to be listed as lost along the Bajoran-Cardassian border and to send out a search crew for the minimum amount of time necessary. The videos recorded by the Mirthless have been fully analyzed, and shows a fleet of almost 2,000 Jem'Hadar ships of different varieties now occupying the Cham'Chala sector, and this information must be kept as highly classified for the time being, in order to keep the level of our intelligence secret, as well as to give us time to prepare a response and to figure out how to quietly disseminate this information to the Federations allies. The most obvious problem this presents us is the weakening of another possible key player in the expected upcoming war with the Dominion. The loss of such a large Klingon fleet will play a key role in the upcoming year, no matter which side the Klingon's end up siding with. The gain of such intelligence is easily worth the cost of the Mirthless and its crew, which was staffed specifically for this mission. Any queries regarding this report should be sent to Starfleet Intelligence Headquarters, labeled as response to the search for the Mirthless, and obviously should be kept out of the main databases. Please use personal PADD's and hand courier for communicating on this subject. Much appreciated- Starfleet Intelligence Director, Zee Sintell.