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Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry, and is owned by Paramount Pictures. It is not mine. Please do not sue me.

Captain's Log, Stardate 3145.8:

Full power has been restored to the ship, though the phasers are not yet completely recharged, and we are headed for the radiopause. It is our hope that by leaving on the far side of the planet from the Klingons, we will escape detection for a little longer. We will be dropping a second decoy as we cross the radiopause, in hopes of confusing the Klingon Captain. However, I doubt that this tactic will be successful; we have used it once already in this engagement, and the Klingons may be warlike, but they are not stupid.

The Taj's bridge lights dimmed and the ship shuddered as it cut through the radiopause. Koth glanced over at his engineering officer.

"How long to restore full power to the shields once we clear the radiopause?"

"Three tup. Sensors are more badly degraded than I expected, but they should be clear one tup after getting out of this radiation."

"Stand by forward disruptors."

The Taj shuddered again, breaking free into non-ionized space. Grel stared fixedly into his scope, waiting for the screen to clear.

"Contact. Ahead at two mark negative fifteen. They're running at full speed from the radiopause, making no attempt to hide."

"Perfect! Target--"

"Wait. I have a second contact, skirting the radiopause. Moving slow and under stealth. Same ship, but...they have an impulse flutter, and their shields are down. The running target had its shields up."

"We damaged the target's shields." Koth frowned. "But they have had half a rep or more to repair them."

"They may be running with shields down to improve their stealth."

"The unit running free must be a decoy. The stealthy contact, with no shields and damaged impulse drive, must be the target." Koth indicated the screen. "Target the second contact. Arm forward torpedoes and disruptors."

"Online."

"Fire!"

Kreve stabbed the controls, and the paired disruptor cannons growled, shaking the entire ship. Parasitic blue energy illuminated the guide-paths of the gravitic weapons.

Kreve slammed a fist down angrily on his console. "Clean miss!"

"I told you to lock them up!"

"Disruptors were locked, targeting accuracy within a twentieth of radius."

"Reprogram the torpedo for proximity burst."

"Done."

"Fire!"

Again the ship shuddered, as the linear accelerators kicked the torpedo into flight. It spiraled towards the target, and exploded.

"Contact lost." Kreve snarled his rage. "It was another decoy!"

"Decoy destroyed, Captain."

David nodded. "I'm not really surprised. Are the Klingons coming about?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, Mister Guin, there's no need to keep up the pretense anymore. Full impulse power, please."

"Aye, sir." Chief Darr's repairs allowed the ship to attain eighty percent maximum thrust, but only at the cost of extensive gravitic eddies that would reveal their position and status quite clearly. Ensign Guin ran the thrust to maximum, and the wounded ship shuddered as she leaped forwards.

"Our speed?"

"Point six lightspeed, sir."

"And the Raptor?"

"Point eight cee. Its current course is thirty degrees off ours, but it is closing up."

David nodded. "All set for Plan Echo?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mister Weber. Take the helm."

"Aye sir." Ensign Guin slid out of the helmsman's seat, making room for the exec, and moved updeck to the engineering station.

"Intercept in twenty-five tup, My Lord."

"Noted." Koth glanced over at the weapons station. "Kreve! Time to torpedo range?"

"Six tup, but torpedoes will be unpowered at that range. I suggest maximum blast radius."

"No." Koth shook his head. "We have only sixteen torpedoes remaining. We will close."

"I have a firing solution. Five tup to torpedo range."

It was going to be a race, at least for the next fifteen minutes. Chief Darr's gang of geniuses needed those fifteen minutes to get the probes modified and ready to use, and every second after that time limit would improve their chances. David cursed silently, hands clenched on the arms of the command chair, trying desperately to will the ship to higher speeds.

"Klingon Raptor on a direct intercept course. Looks like he's maneuvering for optimal torpedo range." Weber examined his instruments. "He will be able to launch torpedoes in eight minutes, with a ninety-percent likelihood of a hit."

"Point defense?"

"At that range, his torpedoes will be at near lightspeed. LASERs will be unable to hit at that speed; the casemounts cannot traverse quickly enough."

David scowled, and glanced at the chronometer. "Fourteen minutes. For six of those, we will be under fire from the Klingons. What can we do to optimize our chances?"

"It is doubtful that the Klingon vessel will be rapid-firing their torpedoes," said Weber. "They will be down to fifteen or sixteen, unless they used some up on Hermes. If they did, that just improves our chances." He tapped a few figures into his console. "Torpedo flight time will be three minutes, assuming he fires at optimal range."

"If I were in his position," mused David, "I would hold fire until I had confirmed a hit or miss on the first torpedo. Flight time for his second torpedo?"

"Two minutes, twenty seconds. Two minutes even for the third, one minute thirty seconds for the fourth."

"So we need to be able to avoid three."

Weber blinked, and glanced over at his captain. "Sir, unless you believe that Chief Darr can restore warp speed in fifteen minutes--"

"No." David shook his head. "We have another ace up our sleeve." He glanced down at the chronometer again. "And we need about another twelve minutes to spring it. Do your best, Mr. Weber."

"Aye, sir." Weber turned back to his console, and thumbed a control. With a high-pitched whine, the targeting hood unfolded from under its protective cover, and slid into place.

"Three tup to torpedo range. I have one torpedo loaded and armed, tracking the Federation vessel now."

"Excellent." Koth glanced down at the gunner's instrumentation. "Recompute for launch at six million kellicamey."

"Yes, My Lord. Four tup, fifty lup to torpedo range."

"Increase torpedo acceleration to maximum sublight velocity." Koth reseated himself in the center seat. "Grel. Scan the Federation vessel, and determine its point of weakest defense."

"Acting." Grel adjusted his controls. "Scan indicates a reduction in rear deflector screening, possibly due to our earlier attack. One anticurve rider damaged, anticurve balance thereby ruined. Rear linear accelerators are--Wait." Grel raised a hand. "Their anticurve rider is damaged, but they are running towards the anticurve limit. Why?"

"They are Earthlings," sneered Koth. "Running is what they do."

"They could have evaded detection. I can think of a dozen ways to do so. And yet they are running like a frightened targ - stupidly, blindly, without reason." Kreve shook his head. "I cannot believe that this Federation captain is so stupid. He has proven far too cunning so far to run in such a manner."

Koth considered this. "You think that he is leading us into a trap?"

"It is possible. I would suggest a sensor sweep ahead of their path."

"Two tup to torpedo range."

Koth scowled, then nodded. "Scan ahead of the target."

Kreve tapped his controls. "Passive scan out to five tup at light-speed reveals nothing ahead of the Federation vessel."

"That is only six tup at our current speed," snarled Koth. "Use the active sensors."

"I cannot, at our acceleration." Grel was unmoved by his commander's display of rage. "We must cut acceleration for at least thirty lup in order to use active scan."

"Half a tup will make no difference to the Federation ship," allowed Koth. "Helm! Cut the impulse drivers."

"Klingon warship has cut power," reported Ensign Salazar. "They are losing velocity due to gravitic distortion."

"Slowing down to scan," mused David. "Tom--"

"Yep." Weber was already punching instructions into the computer. "Shell game, round three."

"My Lord!" Grel looked up, eyes wide. "Active sensor scan indicates approaching Federation heavy cruiser, hull number NCC-1701."

"Ignore it."

"But, my Lord! It is the Enterprise!"

"Does the bearing to Enterprise lead directly through the Kepler?"

"Yes, almost directly so."

"I shall not be fooled again. Ignore Enterprise. It is a phantom. Full impulse power; resume pursuit of the Kepler."

"Nice try, Tom." David grinned. "How long until torpedo range?"

"That little bobble cost them about two minutes." Weber checked his instruments. "They'll be in torpedo range in three more minutes."

"Then it worked out in our favour. How are you coming on the torpedo evasion?"

"I can deal with the first two. The third is going to be a problem."

"That is quite all right." David examined the tactical plot. "I think the third is just what we will need."

Chief Darr was getting his hands dirty, and loving every minute of it. With the crash priority that the Captain had placed on these little toys, every pair of hands was needed for the work. Gingerly, he lifted out the subspace transducer from the nose of the drone, and set it aside.

"Mister Gibbons. Is the warhead ready?"

"Yes, sir." Gibbons and McCone carefully slid the warhead over to the drone. Constructed from a cannibalized phaser rifle and a layer of shielding, it was completely without cooling systems. When it fired, it would overheat and melt into slag in about a millisecond.

This was twice the lifespan that Darr expected overall, and he had tweaked the rifle's output accordingly.

"Klingon torpedo incoming," reported Ensign Salazar. "Range, two point eighty-eight million kilometers. Acceleration four hundred thousand meters per second squared. ETA two minutes."

"About time." David examined the torpedo track. "Tom, got your next dirty trick ready?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Ninety seconds."

"Mister Usher," said Weber. "Transfer reserve power to rear deflector shields. Charge the rear phasers."

"Aye, sir."

"Stand by rear tractor beams."

"Sixty seconds."

"Mine launcher loaded, but not yet primed."

David tapped the torpedo track. "It's dropping down. It will be outside our rear phaser cone before it comes in range."

"I expected that, sir." Weber nodded, his hand poised over the ship's attitude controls.

"Thirty seconds."

"Mister Salazar, allcall, please."

"You're live, sir."

"This is the Captain speaking." His voice echoed throughout the ship. "All hands, brace for evasive maneuvers."

"Ten seconds."

David sat down, and carefully closed the chair's roll bars over his lap.

"Five. Four. Three--"

"Execute plan Echo."

Weber's left hand traced down the theta attitude controls, and the Kepler pitched violently nose-up. The incoming torpedo noted its change in aspect, but had no chance to compensate for the maneuver. As the nose of the ship rose, it brought the rear-mounted phaser banks into arc with the torpedo.

No human would have had reactions sufficient to take the shot, but the details had already been programmed into the library computer. All four phaser cannon opened up on the torpedo. Three of the four beams, fired simultaneously, impacted the torpedo. The coherent beams of nadions disrupted the strong and weak nuclear forces in the casing of the torpedo, and it crumpled under the stress of its own warp field. The magnaphoton containment system failed microseconds afterwards, and the antimatter stored in the warhead mixed freely with the monatomic hydrogen outside the field, resulting in a massive explosion.

But the explosion, as violent as it was, was contained on the far side of the Kepler's shields, and vented its fury against the layers of gravitic force. Kepler shook, and the shield generators whined as they sucked power from the capacitors, but the shields held. Kepler was engulfed in a massive plasma field, but flew out of it, its screens spitting arcs of electricity and drawing a contrail of ionized gas, but intact.

"Kai Kassai, Kepler," breathed Grel.

Koth scowled down at the sensor operator. Grel was Rumaiy, and had a tendency to fall back into the old speech. "Keep that debased loser's tongue off my bridge, and speak only tlhIngan Hol. Try not to demonstrate the fact that you are inferior."

"Yes, My Lord."

"It was a good trick," admitted Kreve.

"Can we prevent them from doing it again?"

"I think so. A slightly different flight path should prevent it. In addition, we can set the torpedo for annular blast, so that if they do manage it again, we may pierce their shields."

"Make it so."

Kreve hurriedly punched buttons on his console. "Flight path reprogrammed. Torpedo room responds tube loaded."

Grel examined his instruments. "The Federation vessel's maneuver has altered its path of flight."

"I will need seventy-five lup to calculate a new firing solution," reported Kreve.

"Course change has shortened the Klingon's intercept." Weber scowled at his intruments, and looked up at the Captain. "Sorry, sir. I tried to cut it as fine as I could."

"Not a problem, Tom." David waved it off. "Mister Obrecki, please deploy the mine."

"Mine is away."

Weber adjusted his controls. "I have it in tow."

"Any chance the Klingons will detect it?"

"Not a chance." Weber grinned crookedly. "I have the tractor emitter in needle-beam, and graviton emissions will be contained within our shields. Once they fire, we'll extend the mine past our shields, and they might be able to detect it then. But by then, it won't matter."

"My Lord, I have a firing solution."

"Excellent. Status of torpedo?"

"Loaded, armed, tracking and programmed." Kreve bared his teeth. "This one shall not be fooled by last-minute evasions."

"Fire!"

The Taj shuddered as the torpedo launched, and the tactical display came alive, showing the torpedo's course. Kreve examined the plot, and nodded. "Torpedo is following its programmed path, and is running hot and true."

"Time to intercept?"

"Two tup from...now."

"Grel. Scan the Federation ship, and give me the status of its rear barrier system."

"Scanning. Rear barrier is weakened somewhat, but recharging. I believe that it will be at full strength by the time the torpedo reaches them."

"Will it be sufficient to stop the torpedo?"

"No." He shook his head. "The blast pattern that I have selected will pierce their shields, though the overall system damage will be low. However, given that their systems are already damaged..."

"Yes. The thinnest blade will still pierce a heart." Koth nodded.

Grelglanced down, and said, "My Lord. The Federation vessel's shields just flickered. I think..." He adjusted his instruments again. "They are employing a graviton tractor beam."

"Do they hope to snare the torpedo?"

"At final approach, the torpedo will be moving far to quickly to be stopped by a tractor beam. Wait..." He looked up. "They appear to be towing a mine."

Koth's eyes widened, and his mouth opened, but he could not bring himself to speak. Finally, he laughed. Kreve and Vash exchanged a look of relief.

"This Federation commander is a man of spirit. It is hard to remember that humans are weak, when faced with one like this." He looked over at Kreve. "I assume that there is nothing we can do?"

"No. The torpedo is fully remote, and cannot be reprogrammed. Further, when they detonate the mine, we will lose sensor lock, so we cannot launch another torpedo until they do so."

Koth glanced over at Grel, and quietly said, "Kai the Kepler."

Grel blinked.

The display fell apart as the Federation photon mine detonated, prematurely destroying the torpedo. Slowly it cleared, and Grel started running his plot again.

"Damage report?"

"Rear shields depleted, down to thirty percent. Capacitors are recharging, but we lost two generators due to overload." Engineer's Mate Usher tapped the readout. "Number two tractor emitter is burned out. We won't be using that trick again."

"Not a problem." David tapped his communications controls. "Chief Darr. Progress?"

"Just buttoning up the last drone. We'll start moving them to the rear torpedo tubes in thirty seconds."

"Negative. Please take them to the hangar bay."

There was a pause. "Hangar bay, sir?"

"Yes. Do not secure them. Just arm them, lay them in the bay, and let me know when you're ready."

"Permission to use intraship beaming?"

Weber glanced over at his Captain, and shook his head.

"Negative. We don't want to tip out hand."

"I have a firing solution."

"What is that saying that the Humans have? 'Third time is the victory?'" Koth nodded. "Fire!"

The torpedo streaked from the tube. Flight time was much shorter now, due to the reduced range. The Federation Captain was evidently out of tricks, as he immediately started throwing his ship out of the torpedo's path. But Kreve's programming held true, and the torpedo followed the dodging ship unerringly. At the last moment, the Kepler rolled ship. The torpedo detonated, its annular blast mostly missing the ship.

Mostly.

The Kepler's defensive barriers flared and died. Her screens absorbed a lot of energy, the overload causing the polarized plating to explode away from the ship. A trail of debris spewed from the rear of the ship; a shuttlecraft could be clearly seen tumbling away from the crippled transport.

And the bridge of the Taj rang with the howls of the Klingons, victorious.

"Damage report!"

The bridge of the Kepler was thick with smoke. EPS overloads had blown out half the consoles on the bridge. The face of the astrogator console was cracked and sparking, the overhead lights were out, the command intelligence screen showed nothing but static. David staggered away from the center chair, his left hand burned from a melted circuit in the chair's arm. He made his way over to the engineering station, and asked again, "Mister Usher. Damage report!"

"Shuttlebay explosively decompressed. Aft emergency transporters are decompressed. Pattern buffer for all transporters aft of radial ninety is destroyed. Tractor control destroyed. Towpad solenoids offline."

"I care more about the weather on Romulus than about damage to auxilary systems. What about communications arrays? Impulse drive? And the main energizer."

"All communications still online, but we've got no channels to the aft array. Forward array only. Primary navigational array damaged, but operable. Max speed will be point one cee. Impulse drive completely unharmed. Warp drive no more broken than before. Main energizer overloaded and is in a restart cycle, but auxiliary power is up, and we still have the batteries."

"Okay, better than I expected. Nice work, Tom."

Weber nodded once.

"What's the Klingon doing?"

"He's slowing. Primary disruptors charging."

"All right. Power down the main sensors." He waited a moment, then, "Signal all stop on the impulse drive."

"Their impulse reactors have shut down." Grel studied the display. "Now their shields. Completely down, not even residual charge. Screens down. Matter/Antimatter reactor stopped. Sensors stopped." He looked up. "Their phaser emitters are cold, and the capacitor banks discharging. It looks like they are transferring all power to their life support."

Koth nodded. "They won't be needing that for long."

"Signal from the Federation ship," reported Vash. "We have incoming visual, if you want it."

"Visual?" Koth nodded. "Yes. I wish to see this cunning Human face to face, before I destroy him."

The screen flickered and cleared, revealing a human's face. Blood trickled from a cut on his forehead, and the air behind him was thick with smoke. The screen itself was somewhat fuzzy, due to damage to the Kepler's communication system.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Rider David, commanding officer of the Kepler, NCC-3816."

"This is Koth, Captain of the Taj. What do you want, Lieutenant Commander?"

"We surrender." David grimaced, as though the words had a bad taste to them. "We have lost shields and propulsion, our weapons are down. If you have any mercy, please, we surrender."

"Is it not a Human saying, that Klingons take no prisoners?" Koth sneered. "But here you are, begging for mercy from us."

"Half our crew is dead. Our ship is badly damaged, but still viable. Certainly, it would make a worthy prize. And you would need a crew to man it." David paused. "Our lives would be a small enough price, in order to capture this ship."

"I like you, Human. You think like a Klingon." Koth paused. "Very well. I accept your terms. We will be coming into transporter range. Any attempts to deceive us will be detected; your weapons cannot be fired before we detect their power-up, and destroy your ship in retaliation. Do you understand me?"

"Our weapons are completely off-line. I don't think we could fire them ever again."

"Then stand by. Our prize crew will be aboard shortly." Koth waved, and Vash cut the channel.

"Grel."

"Yes, My Lord?"

"Scan the debris field. This Lieutenant Commander David is a crafty man, and I would not be surprised to find more mines in the debris."

Grel worked the controls, hunting through each piece of junk in the debris. "Four standard Federation communication drones. A crippled shuttlecraft. Various loose pieces of personal equipment. No mines."

"Excellent. Bring us to transporter range. Keep us out of arc from their guns."

"Acting."

The Taj slipped closer to the wounded Federation vessel, until it came to rest a mere thousand kellicamey from the Kepler. Koth clicked on his intercom. "Force Leader Mablon. Are your Marines ready?"

"We are, My Lord."

"Excellent." Koth turned to Vash. "Lower the shields."

Standard Federation communications drones have a number of features that make them difficult to detect or probe. This is for security purposes; the harder it is to detect the drone, the harder it is to intercept their messages. One such feature was the use of precession gyros, instead of maneuvering jets, for controlling the drone's attitude. Another feature was the presence of a very sensitive passive gravitic sensor array.

Four commo drones floated in the debris field around Kepler. Each was programmed with the signature of the Klingon Raptor's shield systems. Each had been tracking the enemy ship, keeping their noses pointed at it. While rotating on their precession gyros, their maneuvers were undetectable. When the Raptor dropped its shields, the drones triggered their programs; this was done closely enough that from a humanoid's limited perspective, they activated simultaneously.

The physics of the bomb-pumped generator had not changed significantly since their introduction. Five hundred pounds of chemical explosive detonated behind a linear coil. The explosion drove the coil forwards, through a stator, generating a massive surge of electrical power.

Darr and his team had removed the communications devices from the nose of these four drones, and replaced them with cannibalized phasers. Now, the power generated by the bombs was dumped into the phasers, firing them at the maximum possible output. Maximum physically possible; Darr had thoughtfully removed all limiters on the weapons themselves.

As he expected, the phasers melted to scrap within a millisecond. Not that it mattered; the blast wave of the explosive destoryed the guns a millisecond later. But in the half-millisecond that they were intact and powered, each phaser produced a blast of energy of incredible proportion.

The first drone missed its target, the beam just missing the Raptor's wing. The second was only moderately more successful; though it struck the Klingon ship, the beam sliced through empty crew quarters and the food storage locker.

The third beam struck paydirt. It scythed across the top of the Raptor, tearing through the armour and ripping up the impulse drivers. The impulse drivers automatically SCRAMMed, preventing a runaway reaction, and leaving the Klingon ship in a crippled state.

The fourth beam cut across the neck of the Klingon fighter, explosively decompressing the primary crew gangway. It nicked the bridge, causing conduits to explode and shrapnel to fly, and then cut along the torpedo room, ruining the linear accelerators.

"This is the Kepler. Surrender your ship and prepare to be boarded."

Koth dragged himself upright, and looked around the shattered bridge. Vash was dead, his face peppered with fragments of his own console. Kreve was either dead, or nearly there, face down on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Grel had a hand clutching his leg, a sizeable chunk of metal protruding from his thigh. Blood oozed out around his fingers. He looked up at his Captain, and bared his teeth.

"A Klingon in human form."

Koth nodded. "We cannot allow this ship to escape; secrecy is our prime objective, even above our own survival."

"Then I shall see you again, Captain, on my ship in the Black Fleet."

"Or I shall see you in Sto-Vo-Kor. One way or another, we shall learn which of us was right." Koth took his seat, and gave his last command.

"Best speed, physical intercept."

"Acting."

"Captain, the Klingon ship has started accelerating."

"What?" David stood. The fake blood had already dried and flaked away from his forehead, and he brushed the last of the red dust from his brow.

"She's coming at us on thrusters, at five gees." Weber glanced down at his board. "Impulse engines are still restarting, phasers are cold, shields are cold...If she hits us, her antimatter containment goes down, and we go up."

"Point defense?"

"Active, but if we fire on them at this range, and disrupt their antimatter storage..."

"All power to the navigational deflectors." David grinned. "Turn it on the Raptor at full power. Mister Obrecki, please use the LASERs to burn out the Raptor's thrusters."

"Yes, sir."

The LASERs lashed out, destroying the chemical thrusters on the Klingon fighter, and the powerful main deflector, normally used to push meteoroids out of the path of a warp-speed starship, shoved the fighter back. It tumbled helplessly in space for long minutes, and then exploded. Something caused the antimatter storage to fail, and when uncontained, the volatile fuel blew the Klingon ship to fine particles. The blast caused the screen's compensation equipment to kick in, dimming the glare to tolerable levels.

David waited until the glare faded, then turned to his exec. "I don't suppose we need to send over the boarding party?"

The entire bridge crew turned to face the Commander as he dropped his head onto the console and roared with laughter.