This is my tribute to Star Trek: The Next Generation's Thirtieth Anniversary. I always did wonder how the Enterprise, any of them, would react to being a shipgirl. Note that this will not be a curb stomp, and Enterprise will not be the only Trek ship in this. Let's just say that USS Yamato will be making an appearance. This story was also partially inspired by stories like "For Earth and Her Colonies" by HistoryAnonymous.
Prologue
Veridian III
The initial assault of the Bird-of-Prey had been shocking; not because it was unexpected, but because the photon torpedoes had passed unhindered through the most advanced shields on offer by the Federation as if they hadn't existed, impacting on the upper starboard section of her secondary hull, opening sections of decks 31 to 35 to the harsh void of space. In her storied career as Starfleet's flagship, she had taken severe damage on several occasions, including having sections of her hull removed by Borg cutting beams, so the pain imparted by the wound was bearable.
But she nonetheless girded herself for the battle to come, shoring up her structural integrity fields as much as possible. Her resolve to keep her crew alive at all costs, especially her captain, was borne from having witnessed the demise of her sister, Yamato, who had been unable to alert her crew to her impeding demise, flying apart without even a single escape pod launched. She would not allow such disaster to befall her own!
"They have found a way to penetrate our shields." came the report of her dour Klingon Tactical officer, Worf, calm despite the impacts of further disruptor fire.
"Lock phasers and return fire!" barked the First Officer, William Riker, taking charge of the situation without hesitation. She began to turn away from the Bird-of-Prey, seeking to open the range on her adversary, firing once from her saucer sections ventral phaser array. The 6-meter beam of collimated nadions splashed harmlessly off the shields of her opponent, doing no damage, and her efforts were rewarded with further disruptor impacts, one of which slammed into her port nacelle pylon. A console on her bridge exploded, hurling the officer manning it and debris into the helm officer, incapacitating both.
"Deanna, take the helm. Get us out of orbit!"
She continued to accelerate, attempting to evade the incoming fire as Lieutenant Commander Data began reporting damage. As she continued to exchange fire with her pursuers, Riker began discussing strategy with Worf.
"What do we know about that old Klingon ship? Are there any weaknesses?"
"It is a Class D-12 Bird-of-Prey. They were retired from service because of defective plasma coils."
"Plasma coils? Any way we could use that to our advantage?"
"I do not see how. The plasma coil is part of their cloaking device."
Any further discourse was interrupted by her bridge shaking violently enough to nearly knock Riker to the ground.
Meanwhile, in main engineering, the crew were working frantically to control the damage and ensure she could keep fighting back.
"Let's get a stabiliser on that conduit!" commanded Geordi LaForge, Chief Engineering Officer. "Reinforce the starboard interlock. Reroute main power through the secondary coupling." As LaForge struggled to hold his beloved ship together, he could only hope that the bridge could come up with something fast to end the fight.
Back on her bridge, Riker had managed to make it over to Data's station.
"Data, would a defective plasma coil be susceptible to some sort of ionic pulse?"
"Perhaps… Yes! Yes, if we sent a low-level ionic pulse, it might reset the coil and trigger the cloaking device." Then, as was becoming more common, the emotion chip that was affecting his programming seemed to trigger. "Excellent idea, sir!"
"As their cloak begins to engage, their shields will drop." added Worf. Hope soared within her as their plan took form.
"Well, that's two seconds they'll be vulnerable. Mister Data, lock on to their plasma coils!"
"No problem!" the android responded jovially. And with that exchange her resolve to tough out the pain solidified.
"Worf, prepare a spread of torpedoes. We'll have to hit them the instant they begin cloaking."
"Aye, sir."
"We're only getting one shot at this, so target their main reactor."
"I have accessed their coil frequency, initiating ionic pulse!" came the call from Data.
"Make it quick!" As that order was given, a well placed disruptor shot impacted in the center of her neck, just below the impulse thruster. The blow shook the ship harder than any before, nearly overloading her structural integrity fields, but she hung on grimly, determined to see this through to its conclusion.
On the bridge, the entire rear console detonated, launching the body of the officer manning them across the room, nearly killing him as he cartwheeled over the tactical command console.
As the medical personnel began to evacuate the injured, she detected the initiation of the pulse. As the Bird-of-Prey began to waver, it was with great relish that she obeyed the command to fire, launching a single torpedo from her rear torpedo tube. It flashed across the intervening space, striking home with unerring precision and overwhelming force.
She began to relax as her enemy vanished amidst a cloud of plasma and swirling debris. She took diagnostics as her crew celebrated their victory, but her heart sank as she viewed the results.
She could only hope they all made it off in time.
Not for the first time, she praised the quick thinking and reactions of her command staff. They had saved her from destruction on may occasions, and would save the lives of the crew and their families on this one.
She accessed the monitoring equipment and internal sensors, verifying none were left on her stardrive as the saucer section slowly accelerated away. Satisfied with the completeness of the evacuation, she accessed the central computer to check on the progress of the breach.
She performed a calculation to determine if the saucer would be far enough away that the detonation would not destroy it. If she had had skin, all color would have drained at the result. The breach was progressing faster than expected, at this rate the saucer would be far too close to escape the explosion.
She desperately diverted all power, including life support, to increasing the strength of the emergency containment field to slow it, watching as the time to detonation briefly paused, then began to decrease once more. Knowing that nothing more could be done, she checked the calculation once again, and was pleased to discover that the saucer would be able to escape destruction.
It would not remain unscathed, but it would be far enough away that damage would be superficial. She sent one final command to the saucer section's computer, diverting all available power to the structural integrity field to ensure the greatest chance of survival of her precious crew. She accessed the video feeds that normally routed to the view screen for the battle bridge, glad to get one final look at the part of her that would ferry them to safety, bringing up an overlay of the timer that served as the final countdown of her existence.
As the final milliseconds ticked down, she would have smiled, knowing that her final acts would mean the survival of over 1,000. Then an event that shocked her to her core (both of warp and computer), a face she had become painfully familiar with since her first encounter during that fateful mission to Farpoint Station appeared in her monitor, and an other worldly voice echoed through the computer banks that contained her.
"I'm afraid, mon capitaine, that your adventures aren't quite finished yet."
Her final thought before being consumed by the unstoppable fires of an uncontrolled matter/antimatter annihilation reaction was a single letter. A single letter that had been the bane of 3 separate Starfleet commanding officers for more than a decade and a half.
"Q?"
