Chapter 2: Shrinking Fleet
The two ships named Enterprise finally exited the wormhole and looked out at what was in front of them, the fear that crept through the entire crews of each ship hit an all time high at the scene that lay before them. For where the fleet of allied ships once were positioned was nothing but a starship graveyard. The only ship that was in one piece was the U.S.S. Voyager, thanks to her futuristic hull armor, but it was still heavily damaged. The Voyager was slowly moving through space and on emergency life support, all other essential systems were down. Archer fell to his knees as he stared at the scene in front of him. All Kirk could do was put his hand on his friends shoulder and stare out at the bodies of the thousands of men and women who lost their lives here. The crew remained silent.
"Report!" bellowed Picard from his captains chair staring at the scene with clenched fists, this was it for the Captain. Any diplomatic approach that he had was just thrown out the window, the Empire a war, they'll get far more than they bargained for.
Worf looked down at his tactical station and shook his head, "Captain, the only ship intact is Voyager and I cannot tell how severe the damage is due to their armor. I am also detecting hundreds of escape pods, but all of them are showing no life signs aboard."
Picard looked at Q who stood their with an anger on his face that Picard had never seen before. "That's what they did to her..." Q whispered to himself as he stared out at the lifeless ships out in open space.
Picard approached Q and whispered to him, "Who Q, what did they do to her?" Q just sighed, "I'll tell you when we have the time, right now we need to assist Voyager as I can sense that Kathrine is in great distress at this moment in time."
Picard turned towards Worf and pointed at him and Riker to follow him to the shuttle bay, they would get the Voyager back to form in a few days and then head out to find the rebel alliance and hopefully destroy some Star Destroyers along the way.
Archer and Kirk rounded the corridor and entered into engineering where Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker the third and Scotty awaited them. Before the Captains could speak Trip did the honors, "Capn, Jim, we have some good news and some bad news." Trip paused and continued, "The good news is we have enough supplies aboard our ship and the Enterprise-E to get the Voyager back in shape in just two days or so... but..."
Kirk scowled, "But what Trip? Spit it out."
Scotty pointed at a screen displaying a Star Destroyer and spoke, "The bad news is that we have a wee bit of a problem with this big boy, we just detected it with our special gear that the Klingons gave us to detect the cloaks that they gave the Empire and we detected it a few minutes ago off our starboard bow and now it just disappeared, they may have added modifications to the cloaking device to make it change frequencies once detected." Scotty moved the screen around and pointed at a spot on top of the shield generators of the Destroyer which were positioned on top and shaped like a large disco ball, "But, I have more good news to add to that. Their shields are still positioned here as a ship that large still needs massive shield generators to protect itself, but that's not all, computer magnify section 56-alpha." The screen enlarged to show two tiny black spheres on the left side of each shield generator.
Archer nodded, "So what you're saying is if we take out the shield generators on one of these things we also take out the cloaking device as they stationed right next to the generators, why on earth would they make it so easy for us?"
Kirk pointed at the ship and minimized it to show its full size and then pressed a few buttons to compare it to the Enterprise-E, the largest ship in the federation fleet, "The regular class of Star Destroyer is more than twenty times bigger than the biggest ship in our fleet, and the Super Star Destroyer is more than fifty times bigger, in order to cloak and shield each side of the ship they need a cloaking device on each side of the ship and a generator on each side as well, while that is a plus for us it will still be very difficult to penetrate their shields as they are top tier federation shields on a massive scale. In other words, no shuttles or fighters can go through their shield and take them out, their shield models made this possible while ours make this impossible."
Tucker nodded and pointed at the massive ship again, "Jim is correct, but he's missin one thing, these things are heavily shielded as they are the center point of the shield but that means that the shields get thinner the farther along the ship you go, computer enlarge the very front of the ship." Tucker pointed at a small area that he had highlighted in red earlier, "There's one spot on each ship that should be vulnerable to a photon torpedo sir, or even transporting a strike team or live torpedo on board it sir, it's a weakness that we need to exploit in every confrontation."
Archer shook his head, "Yes, that's a great start but now we have to find a way to neutralize the tie fighters that are now heavily armed that will be heading our way, Starfleet estimates that each destroyer is capable of holding around a thousand of those fighters each, and they normally travel in groups of two to three, so that makes it us vs three destroyers and three thousand small fighter ships that are hard to lock on to with our phasers and torpedoes."
Scotty smiled, "Ah, that's where you're wrong captain, we have a piece o hull from one of the fighters, they're magnetic and if we are able to calibrate a few torpedoes to be sensitive to that exact magnetic frequency we can destroy all three thousand of their ships with just ten torpedoes or so." Scotty opened a little slot next to the computer and revealed a piece of the hull, "This hull is like an old earth magnet from the twentieth century, granted it's much more advanced but the attraction is very similar and I have already started working on a way to get a torpedo attracted to this type o hull, I should have the work done in about five hours or so."
Archers spirits raised a little bit as he slapped Scotty on the shoulder and beckoned to Kirk to follow him back to the bridge, "Well then Scotty, in the words of Jean-Luc, make it so."
Three days later...
With the Voyager finally repaired and reinforcements finally arriving it was finally time to get on with the mission and find what might be left of the rebel alliance, Master Yoda was finally on board the Enterprise-E while the U.S.S. Sanders had transported Jedi Master Luke Skywalker to the Enterprise NX-01. While each ship jumped into Hyperspace Picard sat in his ready room and gazed at Q who was sitting across from him, Picard wanted to know who this "she" was that Q had muttered about a few days ago and he wanted to find out if she was the reason he was even here to help. "So Q, you told me a few days ago you would tell me who this woman you mentioned was, who was she and why is she important to you?"
Q clasped his hands and looked down, "She was... a lover of mine. I know this may be hard for you to believe but I was once deeply in love with a Jedi knight, her name was Adi Gallia, she was a very powerful and formidable Jedi. Even then, the emperor was able to block my powers so I had to gain access to her by giving myself Jedi powers and entering their galaxy with a ship that I had created just outside of it... The emperor, Darth Sidious was in front of us the whole time as a senator and chancellor. We weren't able to detect him and because of that he was able to gain access to the military. He massacred all the Jedi with the exception of a few that I helped escape to distant galaxies, including yours." Q paused and sipped his water, he hated having to consume food and liquids to stay alive but being mortal, he had to. "I tried to save her and transport her on my ship but it was too late, Vader's star destroyer locked on to her Starfighter and they blew her to bits. That's why I'm here, I'm here to end the Emperor and Vader once and for all and then finally, I can bring her and all of the Jedi back from the grave and bring balance to the force."
Picard stared at Q in awe, he never had seen this side of Q before. He was angry, upset and had compassion for the woman he had loved and his fallen comrade. "Q, from what I understand though a Jedi was not allowed to be in a relationship or be in love, am I mistaken?"
Q shook his head, "You're correct Picard, what we did was against the code but we were so in love, I would never turn to the dark side and join ranks with those miserable cowards and neither would she, it was unfortunate when one of us did, it was a pity... I used to consider that snake my friend."
"Who?" Picard asked as he leaned on his desk, getting more interested by the second.
Q looked at the Captain with malice and pure hate in his expression, "Vader."
Vader stood aboard the bridge of the executor and stared out into the distance, he felt him, his presence. Q, a man who he had considered a friend all those years ago was now his enemy. He had been foolish to trust the entity when he was a weak minded Jedi, and now it was finally his time to end him once and for all, Vader turned slowly and walked out of the bridge and into a dark room that was barely lit, kneeled down on the ground and waited. The Emperors figure finally appeared in front of him in the form of a hologram and spoke, "Rise my old friend, I know you have felt what I have sensed."
Vader stood up and nodded, "I have, what do you desire me to do my master?"
The Emperor grinned underneath his hood and showed his sickening yellow teeth, "Do what you do best my old friend, destroy him and all of his companions, but bring Kirk to me. I require him for... other purposes."
Vader bowed once more, "As you wish" and with that the hologram of the Emperor vanished, now it was time to finally face his old friend Q, they could run but they couldn't hide for long.