While Starfleet Intelligence had been able to make relatively little sense of the internecine strife that was the new normal for the Romulan people, one place in which it had made considerable strides in the years since the Hobus supernova was in understanding Romulan technology. Partly, this was due to the assistance of the Romulan Republic, whose existence had meant the days of impending harm masked as good intentions were at least temporarily at an end. But partly this had also been due to the good work of its analysts and field agents, making a clearer picture of what the Romulans - specifically, the Tal Shiar - were capable of, as well as their aims.
Tw'eak had taken an interest in these reports, mostly because they made for good reading, if one could take the tersely-written technical writing and treat it like a tale full of action and suspense, but such knowledge might be found to have its uses. She had read much about this D'Deridex-class warbird - how much harder to come by they had been for the Star Empire and Republic alike, how their overwhelming volume had led them to be used in a broad variety of purposes well beyond their previous warlike purpose, how the Reman resistance had taken custody of several of them. But in her mind could find no discernible reason why there should be a D'Deridex-class warbird hanging right in front of her, well within weapons range (if the shuttle she was aboard had any worth the effort of using), nor why it should choose to target a derelict freighter and hasten its destruction, in the way it just had.
A quick visual scan revealed the telltale tattoo emblazoned on the forward section - the bridge of its nose, or beak, as one might more prosaically put it - of the old Star Empire emblem, an inverted triangle in the shape of a raptor's wings, unmistakable at any distance upon its bright green hull. So why exactly the Star Empire would commit one of its few remaining D'Deridex warbirds, useful and adaptable for so many other purposes, to be resident in this system, at this moment, was lost on her. So, too, was the connection between this warbird and the others which had chased her starship, the USS Repulse, from the system. Perhaps this was one of those warbirds. If so, it being here, while the Repulse was not, made it a harbinger of destruction in more ways than one.
So many questions, unanswered, flashed through her mind in an instant. They made no sense. None of this made any sense. The brief thought in her mind of how she had intended for today to be spent once the patrol had been completed at its scheduled time, incident-free, had been yet another of those unanswered questions. Another routine warp core ejection drill sounded infinitely preferable to being prey for a warbird on the hunt. But there was no time for questions - these were Romulans, and the only way they were going to survive was to act aggressively, through direct engagement. The odds were razor-thin, but Tw'eak had a plan.
"Give me power to shields and weapons," Tw'eak ordered.
"You're kidding, right?" Lieutenant Dyralxia Rau said from the forward operations station. Next to her, the pilot, Ensign Brienne Koepka, gave Tw'eak yet another desperate glance, clearly on the verge of panic.
The freighter's remnants did not detonate, but smouldered, as the energy of the Romulan disruptors tore them asunder. The warbird briefly adjusted its position with thrusters, to avoid colliding with the debris as it tumbled past. A few flares danced along its underside as some of that debris met the D'Deridex's navigational shielding.
"Status on the warbird," Tw'eak asked Lieutenant Darren Baird, who had angled in behind Rau, his eyes on a tactical display.
"They haven't raised shields. Torpedoes are offline, but disruptors are fully charged."
"We're so screwed," Koepka muttered.
Tw'eak nodded, then realized she couldn't assent without turning Koepka's statement into anything other than a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I disagree," she said with a smile. "We've got them right where we want them."
Rau's eyes were bewildered. "I shoulda known you'd be the 'blaze of glory' type, boss."
"I'm not." Tw'eak leaned forward, pointing into the warbird's aft 'winged' section. "Can you get us in there?"
"Inside?" Koepka was incredulous.
"Not inside - between, more like."
Baird shook his head. "We don't know what's in there."
"Nothing," Rau declared. "She's right, it's empty space."
"It's an enclosed space, yes." Tw'eak held her hands like a cage, leaving room in between, where she poked her thumb. "And they can't risk firing on us within there, or they'll hit themselves."
"They'll squish us like a bug," Baird predicted.
Tw'eak shook her head. "My understanding of bugs is that they're not always that easy to squish," she said. "Especially by something that much bigger."
"Besides," Rau noted, "they don't even see us."
Koepka saw it first. A burst of disruptor energy began to emanate from the lower forward section, and she tapped her console quickly, thrusters active, to engage an emergency maneuver. "Nope, they see us alright!"
"Get us moving, Lieutenant," Tw'eak instructed Rau. "Full power to engines - No sense gliding now."
"You got it."
As if on cue, the shuttle sprang forward, narrowly missing another disruptor beam as it did.
"Shields are up," Baird noted.
"For what they're worth," Rau added. "One shot, maybe two, and we're dead."
"Full impulse," Tw'eak said, leaning forward. "Close that gap. Put everything else into shields."
Koepka shook her head. "No way I'm flying straight at them."
"Fastest way there is a straight line," Rau countered.
"We'll be an easy target that way. Just... let me dance."
Tw'eak didn't hesitate. "Do it."
The shuttle deftly careened forwards at half-impulse, Koepka inputting pre-programmed evasive maneuvers at regular intervals. It took Tw'eak a moment to realize that she was timing her maneuvers to occur a fraction of a second before the disruptors opened up. Before long - certainly not as quickly as Tw'eak would have preferred - the shuttle was too close for the warbird to fire upon, and it rushed up and over the warbird's upper wing section briefly, before spiraling back down and tucking in just beneath it. Dangling just beneath the upper wing put it out of reach.
"Uh, Commander?" Baird's voice was slightly frantic. "They've raised their shields."
Tw'eak had expected this. "Good, then they can't cloak."
"But we're trapped," Rau noted.
"I'm reading activity in the launch bays," Baird reported.
"They're gonna send shuttles after us," Rau anticipated. "And we can't get through their shields to escape."
"I don't intend for us to escape until we've hurt them first," Tw'eak advised. "We have micro-quantum torpedoes equipped, do we not?"
"Not many of them," Baird replied. "Total complement of twelve, it says."
"We'll only need a couple." She pointed down at a section of the lower 'neck', connecting the forward section to the lower wing. "Right along here is where their main EPS junction runs to the forward section - to the shield generators and deflectors. Including their navigational deflectors."
Rau looked back over her shoulder at Tw'eak. "How do you know that?"
"Intelligence reports. I read a lot. It's a hobby."
"You spend your spare time reading about how to kill things?" Rau was incredulous.
"Starships, warbirds, turrets, fixed installations..." Tw'eak paused. "Job-related, so maybe not so much a hobby." She pointed again, looking at Baird. "Got a lock yet?"
"We're full power now, so targeting sensors are active," Rau said.
"Laying in the target," Baird said. "It's... I'll have to fire a spread of them to be sure. It's a thin target to hit."
"Gotta hit it at least a couple times along its length for maximum disruption." Tw'eak leaned over to Koepka. "Once the shields are down, I want you to go to warp."
Koepka nearly leapt from her chair. "Warp!? What heading - I - where?"
"Any heading in the warbird's aft headings. This thing has the turning radius of a small moon. Be careful going to warp through their aft quarter - go past that aft quarter. By the time they get their shields back, and then turn to pursue... it might be enough time."
"Don't forget their shuttles," Rau observed. "They'll have to recover them, too."
"Maybe," Baird added, "maybe not. But they've just launched four of them."
"Fire when ready, Lieutenant," Tw'eak ordered.
"Firing now," Baird acknowledged.
The micro-torpedoes launched in a tight series of four bright blue flashes, mere moments apart. As they descended, they sparkled with the light of their onboard impellers, illuminating the interior of the warbird as they did.
"Don't wait," Tw'eak said to Koepka. "Start taking us out."
"Here we go," Koepka said with a nod.
The shuttle began to turn and descend to a height equal distance between the wings, its impulse engine firing as it did. Incoming fire from a closing Romulan shuttle narrowly missed the Starfleet vessel, and it accelerated smoothly, just as two of its micro-quantum torpedoes struck home.
"The shields-" Rau said, pointing. Koepka closed her eyes as she took the engines to full impulse.
But the shields were gone when they passed through. "Go!" Tw'eak said to Koepka, and the warp engines vaulted the tiny shuttle into faster-than-light travel, leaving the warbird and its shuttles well in the distance.
An excited, bubbly tone swept over the shuttle's flight deck. Rau, Baird and Koepka all talked rapidly and joyously over one another as Tw'eak leaned back, her shoulders and antennae finally setting into a more graceful angle, at ease. They had escaped without any losses, despite the enormous odds against them. She closed her eyes for a moment, then realized something, and leaned over to the tactical display to Koepka's left. "We made it!" the young ensign shouted, despite being right next to Tw'eak as she did. It took Koepka a second to realize that Tw'eak didn't share her enthusiasm. "What?"
"One of those shuttles is after us," she noted, and the happy noises dimmed.
"We can take them," Rau said bravely.
"It's not that," Tw'eak replied. "We can't risk the engagement. That warbird's sure to follow." She called up the navigational display. "What's the nearest Federation system that's in front of us?"
Koepka looked over the selection. "Starbase 114, the Celes system."
"Make that your heading, then, helm."
"Shall we hail the starbase?" Baird asked. "We might be bringing friends, after all."
Tw'eak shook her head. "It's an occupied system. I'm betting the Romulans turn back once they realize where we're going."
"Or that warbird will be on us before we get there," Rau added, pessimistic.
"Or that," Tw'eak repeated.
Koepka looked down at her controls. "I'm already at Warp 9, I can't push this shuttle any faster."
"That warbird tops out at Warp 9.6," Tw'eak observed, without mentioning facts she was well aware of, like how at that speed, the warbird's engines would suffer irreparable damage within minutes. "Time to Celes system?"
"At current speed, twenty-three minutes."
"That warbird could be here any second," Rau said flatly. "I gotta get more power out of these engines." She turned to her console.
"I'll angle the navigational deflector, see if we can't get the warp field contoured a little more optimally," Baird added.
Tw'eak leaned back, having set the three young officers to work. She had figured out that their shuttle would traverse the space without any problems. The Romulan shuttle that pursued them, built in a larger 'runabout' style, was one she knew could barely sustain Warp 9, and would drop out of the chase at some point. Whether this was because its helmsman finally realized where they were going, or whether because their engines could no longer maintain pursuit, hardly mattered. The perception of danger, the potential for it, was enough to motivate her subordinate officers. And it would, she hoped, help to bridge whatever animosity existed between Rau and Koepka if they could realize they had the ability to work together.
The minutes passed without incident, just as Tw'eak had hoped.
"We're arriving in the Celes system," Ensign Koepka noted.
As they did, and the streaking starfield passed into its normal shape with a flash, a very different silhouette suddenly hung over them.
"We're being hailed," Baird said, as his tactical console beeped.
"Let's hear it," Tw'eak replied.
"-this is the starship Tecumseh, calling unidentified shuttlecraft, identify yourself immediately."
Tw'eak looked through the forward viewport, and saw the name U.S.S. TECUMSEH boldly emblazoned on the ventral saucer section of an Excelsior-class starship, motionless in space before them. She had never beheld a more gorgeous sight.
"Open a channel, Lieutenant."
Baird nodded at Tw'eak.
"This is Commander Twaiheak Sh'abbas of the starship Repulse, currently onboard shuttlecraft and requesting immediate permission to dock, Tecumseh."
There was a momentary silence. Tw'eak recognized when a channel had been muted.
"Commander," a different voice, less serious in tone but no less authoritative, came over the air. "This is Captain Dorian Collins, commanding USS Tecumseh. Before I give you any authorization to do anything other than come to a complete halt, you will explain yourself, and the whereabouts of your shuttlecraft's home starship."
"This shuttle was engaged in docking maneuvers conducting a freighter inspection, and we became separated when Repulse was forced to disengage. We sent a subspace transmission some time ago - about half an hour ago - containing information which will corroborate those facts."
"So you haven't taken absent without leave, then."
"I'm Repulse's first officer, and I have three of my crew with me, Captain. Believe me, those warbirds were lucky we were on this shuttle when they engaged our starship. Else we would've given them hell."
Captain Collins made a sort of half-snort. Koepka and Rau shared a glance, and Baird chuckled.
"Alright, Commander. You've made your case. Permission to dock granted - please direct your pilot to our main shuttlebay. I look forward to speaking to you once you're all safely aboard. Do you or your people require any medical attention?"
"Not at all, ma'am. We're all just fine, now." Tw'eak tapped Koepka on the shoulder, and gestured with her other hand towards the starship in front of them. She cut the channel. "Just fine," she repeated.
With a few inputs, the ensign directed the shuttle's flight past the Excelsior-class starship's starboard warp nacelle, and into the docking flight pattern, towards the awaiting shuttlebay.