Star Trek Enterprise:
Stand and Fight to the Finish
By JD Marx
1/17/07
Dear Fan Fic Community:
It has indeed been a while since I had posted any of my stories. The last story I was working on in collaboration with my girlfriend then (now my wife) was Angel: All Apocalypses Aside. We hope to one-day finish the story that has attracted many fans. We thank all of you and apologize for our absence and hope that one day we will be able to finish it. Now onto my newest project. Enjoy it and please review.
Author's Note
The story you are about to read came about from a desire to totally forget "These Are the Voyages" which was a finale that was more for the Star Trek franchise than a true series finale for the cast and crew that brought Enterprise to our entertainment every week for four years.
Stand and Fight to the Finish also came forth from irritation over the fact that we would never see the Romulan Wars. There was hope that the now mothballed Star Trek: The Beginning would show us the Romulan Wars on the big screen. It was hoped by millions of fans that this big screen treatment would be epic and deserving of the title Star Trek.
Yet, as is the case in Hollywood, not everything works out like planned. And perhaps we'll never know what the Romulan War looked liked. Time will only tell. But in the mean time, I hope you enjoy my view of what the war could have been like. And enjoy what I consider a tribute to the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise.
I have an entire series planned out and only have about three written in script format out of 11 stories that would take place a year before the Romulan War and up to the end of the War. But on the chance that I may never get around to writing the others, I have put as much information in this story as a can that would describe the stories that would come before my series finale of Enterprise.
Book 1
A Long Road…
Prologue
Delta Wing entered the sector of the hot zone known as the Dragoon system two and a half hours ago. Having been the one tactical wing in the Allied fleet that had suffered the fewest casualties, Central Command knew that they would be up to the job.
Their job was a hit and run strike. Intelligence indicated that the listening outpost in the system was a prime target to hit. Its destruction would result in a blind spot on the Romulan side of the frontlines.
The only problem with this particular war, was that the Romulans seemingly knew every time they passed into their territory. It was not doubted that they had a sensitive sensor buoy system.
The first three years since the first salvo of the war was fired saw this conflict with the Romulans to be nothing more than border skirmishes and hit and run. But when Enterprise and her battle group that would eventually be designated Delta Wing came across Romulan plans of manufacturing a virus to attack Earth with was uncovered, the war heated up.
The Romulans gain ground and the Allies gain it back. The Allies gain ground and the Romulans gain it back. Rarely in the war had the battle gone inward from free space. The last occurrence was four months ago when a Romulan bird of prey began hit and run attacks on systems that not only belonged to the Allies, but the Coalition of Planets as well.
It didn't make sense to why the Romulans would attack the Coalition who had no open hostilities with the enemy of the Allies.
The attack on Coalition assets had brought them into the war. This act had thought to be impossible.
When the conflict first broke out with the lost of the NX-02 Columbia, Secretary General Christopher Thorpe of the United Earth charter had traveled to Babel which was the seat of the Coalition of Planets. He asked for their sanction of war.
What resulted was the Coalition split into two halves. One side wanted to engage the Romulans because they believed it was only inevitable. Earth and the Andoria led this party. The other side wanted to leave well enough alone. Vulcan and Tellar led this opposing party.
In the end, Earth, Andoria and their other allies organized a fleet and sent it on its five-month journey to free space while the other races of the Coalition sat back and watched. Relying on diplomacy via subspace to extinguish the fire that was raging on the frontier.
That was all until the Romulans attacked them did they truly see the true intentions of the Romulans. Conquest.
Delta wing consisted of the NX class Enterprise, with an Intrepid class compliment: Powell, Yorktown, Geneva, and the Avenger. Two Neria class Andorian destroyers, and three Endurance class Alpha Centauri cruisers rounded out this battle group.
The wing made their attack run with little resistance other than what was presented by the stationary defense platforms. A couple of atomics and it made a gaping hole in their defense network.
Enterprise and the Neria destroyers moved in to destroy the listening outpost that orbited the barren world that was unnamed other than designation D-3 that was the third planet in the Dragoon system. The system nicknamed Dragoon because of a local nebula that resembled a dragon.
As soon as Delta Wing warped into the system and began their attack, they immediately began jamming the local space to prevent any sort of sub space burst message from alerting the rest of the Romulan navy that they were under attack.
But apparently, with the current situation being attacked by two Talon flights that consisted of three interceptors, and two war birds, a message got through.
Delta was being pursued at warp speeds as the hostiles slowly gained grounds. What was sure about both of the force's technology was that anything other than particle-based weapons could not be fired. Delta couldn't fire their spatial and photonic torpedoes, nor could the Romulans fire their equivalent.
With the current situation of the Romulans gaining ground, it was only a matter of time before they fired a barrage of particle weapons at the fleeing Allied ships.
Since evasive maneuvers at high warp were dangerous, the flight leader of the wing, Captain Jonathan Archer ordered all ships to pull the maneuver called Ante' Up. With nowhere to run, and reinforcements too far away, it was time to make their stand at the Procus sector.
I never thought it would come down to this, Jonathan Archer thought to himself as he sat in the captain's chair of the NX-01 Enterprise. His attention was directed intently on the situation screen mounted beside his chair as it showed him the current situation Enterprise and the tactical wing she had been assigned to since the outbreak of the Romulan War four years ago.
"Talon's inbound," the voice of the ship's armory officer, Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Reed announced. "Reading target sweeps."
"Shields stable at seventy five percent," the ship's executive officer and science officer, T'Pol announced as she glanced at the shield status board. A technology that was literally given to them by the Andorian High Command shortly before the war broke out.
No matter how many battles the Enterprise encountered, Archer still could not shake that fact that he and the crew of the first warp five vessel that left earth to seek out new life and go where no man had gone before, were in fact fighting a war.
"Target the lead ship," Archer ordered coolly. "Starboard proximity defense set for blind fire."
"Aye," Malcolm answered as he worked intently to reconfigure the ship's proximity defenses to their desired firing mode. Basically with blind fire, the ports would fire their compressed particle bolts in the general direction of the inbound enemy. Once fired, the bolts would detonate into a blast that would cause the inbound Talons fast attack ships to veer away or get caught in the detonation.
"In range, sir," Malcolm stated as the announcement from his station in the form of a harmonic tone sounded.
"Fire!" Archer ordered as not to long after the order was given, Malcolm passed his hand over the fire controls.
Barrages of particle artillery rounds were fired from their weapon ports on the saucer section of the ship. The rounds streaked toward their enemy until they detonated. The detonation sent the three inbound Talons to break off.
"They're coming around for another strike," Malcolm reported as his attention was drawn to his scanner display or scope as he called it.
An alert sounded from T'Pol's station that grabbed Archer's attention. "The Avenger is becoming swarmed with the second Talon flight" T'Pol began, referencing one in three ships belonging to the Intrepid class. "They are suffering a warp core breach."
"They're abandoning ship," the ship's communication officer and senior linguist specialist, Lieutenant Hoshi Sato reported as she heard the panic in the voice of the Avenger's commanding officer calling to abandon ship.
Limited resistance, hell! Archer cursed. Once again the Allies intelligence task force that was consisted of the best and brightest intelligence minds of all the Allies races, simply failed. They couldn't tell a Minshara class from a Kinshara.
"Breach is immanent," T'Pol ascertained.
Damn, Archer cursed.
"Escape pods jettisoning," T'Pol followed up.
"Spread formation, tango pattern three," Archer spoke to Hoshi who quickly relayed the transmission. "Order the Jhurani to fall back and retrieve those pods."
The deck of the ship shook as she and the surviving ships of Delta wing took the brunt of the shockwave from the fallen Avenger.
"Pods?" Archer asked.
A moment of time that seemed like an eternity was spent as T'Pol examined her scanners. Looking for the escape pods that may have survived. When she looked up, she simply shook her head.
"Damn!" Archer cursed aloud this time.
It was a typical tactic that the Romulans employed. Concentrate fire on the weakest ship and use it to their advantage.
"Blood thirsty bastards," Archer cursed the enemy aloud. Obviously not the same captain who stepped foot onto the deck of the Enterprise so long ago. In fact, the entire crew had changed through the baptism of blood that the war spilled.
"Ensign," Archer called out to the young helmsman who's name was Adams. "ETA to the asteroid field?
"Two point five minutes," the helmsman responded not taking his attention away from his console.
"Warbirds are stepping up pursuit," Malcolm called as they advanced past the Talons to allow the interceptors to act as support to the larger ships.
The first time anyone on the Enterprise saw the Talon in combat, it was easily recognized from a previous encounter with a ship of that class that was far more advanced: the Marauder/Mimic ship. Fortunately these Talons did not have the holographic mimic technology.
"Warbirds in range."
"Brace for impact. All ships, aft weapons, fire at will."
Malcolm called up the aft proximity defense guns and the torpedo launcher targeted the lead war bird and fired a spread of artillery bursts.
On his scope he could see the war birds reacting to the inbound artillery as they detonated in front of their paths. With the close range of detonation, their scanners would be blind temporarily. That's when he fired two photonic torpedoes with their names on them. One of the torpedoes impacted dead center on one of the war birds. That war bird attempted to regain flight control and hit its wing mates' wing. The second weapon grazed the shields of another and continued on its flight. The flight ended with its fuel running out and the warhead self destructing.
On the view screen, Archer saw the asteroid belt that beckoned them. The Romulans still in hot pursuit.
Come on, Archer taunted. Get us.
"Sir, Talon's are retaking point."
Afraid to get your hands dirty?
"Ensign, take us in."
"Aye, sir." Adams answered back as he guided them into their destination. Asteroids of all sizes consisted of this belt. They ranged from micro rites, to ship killer and small planetoid sized.
"T'Pol, lower shields," Archer ordered. A command that was not second guessed by his science officer. Running shields in an asteroid field would slow their progress and impede their maneuverability. The field activated, its was difficult to compensate for flight control with the asteroids hitting the bubble that encompassed them. Without shields, they could slip through un interrupted. That was if they didn't encounter a ship killer in the process.
He hated to doubt the skills of Ensign Adams, but he would have felt more at ease with Lieutenant Travis Mayweather at the controls. Travis was a boomer. Being born on a warp freighter, he lived his life on the ECS Horizon. And the one thing boomers were exceptional at was making belt runs. Being in the Earth Cargo Service, on a vessel that a majority of the time was armed with low-grade weapons for defensive reasons, you had to adapt to your surroundings. ECS haulers would hide in asteroid belts to escape marauders and other alien pirates
But they were now traveling one quarter impulse speed as Archer watched the rocks pass by the perspective given off by the view screen as an alert sounded from T'Pol's station. "The Alpha Centauri cruiser Invincible is gone."
"Are the Romulans pursuing?"
"Affirmative," T'Pol's cold response came as Archer rose from his chair and leaned on the helm. "Are you ready Ensign?"
The nervous but determined helmsman managed to nod his head, followed by an "aye, aye sir" response.
"The Romulans are firing weapons," Malcolm announced as his scanners ready a volley impact into an asteroid and obliterate it. The asteroids were the only obstacle in the Romulan's way from getting a clear shot at Delta Wing that was pitch and yawing, performing rolls through the belt.
"Hoshi, transmit now!" Archer nodded towards the young communication officer who did not respond verbally. But the sound of a frequency transmitting was the only response he needed.
"Take us up," Archer placed a reassuring hand on Adam's shoulder.
With his left hand over the propulsion control panel, and his right hand around the flight yoke, for a split second Archer could feel the inertia dampeners take in affect.
"The Romulans are in the asteroid belt," T'Pol reported. "They are following."
On the view screen, Archer and the rest of his bridge crew could see the asteroids getting denser until all that was ahead was the starcape.
"Our last ship has reached open space."
Archer head snapped towards Malcolm's position. "Punch it!" Archer exclaimed with his hand curled into a fist. "Ensign, warp speed."
Malcolm passed his hand over the special ordinance controls and activated them with a grin.
"Now, Ensign," Archer ordered as he turned and walked back to his chair. Sitting at the moment they leaped to warp. Leaving the Romulan attackers behind in the asteroid that was a living atomic inferno. Strategically placed atomic warheads that were laid in that belt two months ago did their job.
The Romulan commanders found themselves dumbfounded as the first pair of atomics detonated. The detonation sent ripples through the field like dropping a pebble in a calm body of water.
What next followed was a spreading the inferno that the Romulans attempted to escape from. Out of six Talons, four were caught by the concussion wave and tossed into rocks. Two managed to outrun the wave and the inferno and emerge from the belt. The war birds were caught in both the concussion wave and the following fiery wrath.
We won, Jonathan Archer thought as he felt little comfort from the sight of the stars streaking past on the view screen. But the casualties weighed heavy on him.
We win today, but there's always tomorrow.
