Meanwhile, quite a few light-years away, Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the starship Enterprise was in his quarters, preparing to record his captains log. This routine was something all starfleet captains had to go through on a almost daily basis, but Kirk was fresh in the game, still not accustomed to these monologues. The last couple of days had been eventful, so many things had happened, and they had learned a lot. So where to begin? Captain Kirk walked aimlessly around in his room, trying to form a good sentence to start with. He needed a good intro, followed by a short yet precise explanation of what it was they had been doing. According to starfleet, a good captains log should be a round description that gives the reader an accurate idea about the nature of the new data that has been recorded, analyzed and stored - comparable perhaps, to the index of a book. Despite lacking a clear plan, he ordered the computer to start recording, jumping right into it:
"Captains log, stardate 1312.3"
He read of the digital calender at his desk. He took a deep breath before he continued:
"While exploring a asteroid-field at the outskirts of the Nibulus system, A heavy G-class star within the Neutral Zone, we have made several intriguing discoveries. We have found and stored several single-celled organisms who feed upon the minerals, water-ice and frozen gas within the asteroid-rocks, and we have met a alien species who call them selves the Mantesians. Communication was a bit rocky at first, as it always is with first-contact situations. Luckily the Mantesians were both friendly and service-minded, so they sent us instructions on how to learn their language. I was pleased to see that Lieutenant Uhura - our communications officer - was up to the job, one day and one night was all it took her to crack the code, and install a functional translation-program into the universal translator."
Captain Kirk felt his mouth go dry, so he asked the computer to stop the recording.
He went into the bathroom to get some tap-water. It was not so long since breakfast, and he still did not feel fit-for-fight. While splasing som extra water over his face in an attempt to freshen up, he ordered his thoughts, forming a rough plan on what to include and what to drop out of his log.
"Continue the recording" He said when he got back out.
The computer beeped, it was its way of telling him that the tape was rolling.
"So who are these Mantesians? According to them selves they have lived in space for several millenniums. They are humanoid in shape, and they seem to have adapted themselves for a life in zero G. Their ship is self-sustained, equipped with everything it needs to produce its own food and its own fuel, as well as recovering from injuries. The Mantesians mine everything they need from asteroids and small uninhabited planets. As mentioned before, the Mantesians have not invented, or have no need for gravity-plating. They find it odd that so many other species make themselves dependent upon this technology even for longer stays in space, and when conversing their captain, he said that we should do as they have done, adapting our selves genetically so that we can dwell in space without depending on advanced and energy-draining technology."
"Computer, stop recording!"
Kirk became uncertain for a moment. - Was such detailed information about their views on gravity-plating was unsuitable for a captains log? Should he drop it out? Would it help the listeners form a overall picture of who that Mantesians were? He concluded that it would, so he resumed without deleting anything of the previous entry.
"Also, the Mantesians have never evolved warp-drive. Their propulsion-system is composed of many ion-accelerators that together gives the ship enough momentum to slowly climb it up to almost full impulse. Their captain - who I have spent several days with, and now consider a friend of mine - says that warp-speed is unnatural, that there is something fundamentally wrong with bending space in order to get around faster. - that we are, in a way - cheating"
Kirk paused for a second, but he didn't ask the computer to stop recording. His captains log was almost complete, but before rounding off he felt like adding a bit more technical data:
"The Mantesian ship is forty kilometers long and five kilometers tall and wide, giving it a interior space of 750 square kilometers, something that makes it the largest spaceship ever encountered by starfleet. It contains seven smaller mining-ships that can be sent down to low-gravity planets or asteroids to harvest oxygen and carbon dioxide for them selves and their farms, hydrogen for their fusion-power plant, and minerals for hull-maintenance. Their rather primitive engine-technology in combination with overall skepticism towards large masses keeps them away from bigger planets. They are equipped with several powerful beam weapons, both phasers, masers and lasers. According to them selves there are several other Mantesians ships in the Alpha quadrant."
And this was not the only memorable event that had taken place during the last couple of days. What else was there? Kirk searched his mind, trying to recall that other events that were worthy of starfleet's attention. That he had beat Spock in multi-level chess again? Nope, that was a personal matter. That he suspected doctor Bones was not only bitter and depressed, but also a alcoholic? Not that either, that was a strictly work-related problem with no scientific value... Something about that freshman he had dropped of at the outpost, he had called them up again from within the Nibulus system and... Aha.
The pause had gotten way too long by now, so he had a minute or so to delete from the entry. But first he had to round it of:
"I'm also proud to report that we have detected signs of a second civilization further into the system. A small spaceship was found by a shuttle sent out from Outpost 32. The ship it detected is moving too slow and is too small to have originated from interstellar space. Its course and angle suggests that it was sent out from the fourth or third planet in the system. Further exploration of the inner planets will reveal which one and perhaps allow us to establish contact. Unfortunately, this will not be done by the Enterprise. Starfleet command have made a tight schedule for us, we have a lot of space to explore, and we are already behind schedule. Tomorrow we are departing, leaving this place for another star, which name I can not remember. - Kirk out"
That last part of the entry got rather sloppy, unfit for a professional captains log. He would have to come back to it once he had found out the name of that star, and re-do the last bit. Could it wait for tomorrow? Nah, it was better to get to it straight away - otherwise he might just forget about it, and by that time he might have another captains-log to produce. His reading-pad was lying at the desk in front of him, right next to the log-recorder that was built into the dark wood. It would take him little time to turn it on and look up their schedule, find out about their plans for the morning. A good captain always knew what waited behind the next corner, prepared and ready for any danger and...
The doorbell rang. Since it responded to vocal commands, Kirk did not have to get up from his chair and open it manually. He simply said "enter" to make it retract into the wall. Hikaru Sulu was standing on the other side. Despite having both Asian features and a foreign-sounding name, the man spoke perfect English. According to himself he was from San Francisco, a US citizen just like Kirk. Americans were slightly overrepresented on board, even though Starfleet was supposed to be not only an international, but also an intergalactic organization. At the bridge they had a Russian navigator and a Vulcan science officer, so that was multicultural enough. - And then there was Scotty the Scotsman leading the work down in engineering. Other than that, it seemed like starfleet drew a lot of its lower ranking personnel from the US only. This had perhaps something to do with the fact that they had managed to get its headquarter to San Francisco. Before starfleet, Kirk had spent most of his youth in the a backward colony named Tarsus IV, so he was not that patriotic, but it was very convenient that English - the language he had grown up with - was obligatory to master within the organization.
"You wanted me sir?" Sulu asked.
"I need a good plan on how to take out the Klingon ship" Kirk told Sulu, not asking him to sit down.
"Sure, All I need is the time and place" Sulu said.
"They are most probably at the Outpost" Kirk answered.
"I will make a full stop in good time. Then I will send out a probe to check if they are there, and if so, I will have a good plan ready - I promise" Sulu smiled broadly while talking, his confidence was reassuring.
"Sounds good" Kirk said, returning the smile.
Sulu headed back to the bridge, Kirk remained seated. When the door had slid shut, he rotated his chair away from the desk. Kirk found the sight of space moving to be relaxing, so he was grateful for the viewport that had been installed in his ready-room. From this angle the stars looked like slow moving laser-beams passing by. Then the ship dropped put of warp, quickly returning them their original form. The already soft and dim humming of the engines below lowered to a near-silence. It didn't last long though. The com-link - that as well, was built into the desk - started whistling, compelling Kirk to turn around and get back to work.
"Spock to Kirk" The caller said.
"Kirk here"
"We have located the scientists from the outpost, permission to bring them in?"
"Permission granted"
Sine he was already up on his feet, and since there was no more planning to do for the time being, Kirk walked out and returned to his seat at the bridge. By the time he got there, the shuttles in question were already up on the main monitor. One F-class shuttle at the front, closely followed by an unidentified boxy looking vessel. They were descending in between the two warp-nacelles, aiming for the shuttle-bay in the aft-section of the ship.
"Are you sure both these are starfleet vessels?" Kirk asked.
The way he saw it, the one lagging behind was way to ugly to be anything made by starfleet.
"Quite certain, we ran a full scan" Spock replied.
"Intriguing." Kirk answered.
"According to the technical scan it's a..." Spock was about to say something more about the properties of the second ship, but he was cut short by an incoming message.
"The front ship is hailing us sir" Uhuru said.
"On screen" Kirk demanded.
It was that Jonas-guy again, the one with the exact same name as one of Scotty's men down in engineering. Fascinating as this might be, they never the less looked very different. This Jonas had a longer, more slender face. He was also a few years younger. During Kirk's last conversation with him not so long ago he had been as smooth-skinned as protocol demanded, bu now he was unshaven and bewhiskered. Also, his hair was a bit too unruly - those outpost-people were way more relaxed than starship personnel on such matters.
"I have new info regarding Outpost 32" Jonas said.
The autopilot was fine-tuning the approach for him, so he could grant his full attention to Kirk and the others at the bridge.
"I'm all ears" Kirk answered.
"Outpost 32 have been destroyed" He said.
Grave as this news might be, the event did not come as a surprise for anyone in the room - no dramatic gasping, no lifted eyebrows or open mouths.
"And what about the crew" Kirk wondered.
"The crew have evacuated. They are floating away from the explosion on a peace of debris, but you wont be able to spot them using a bio-scan"
"Dead?"
"They were still alive when I talked to them five minutes ago"
"If they can be reached on sub-space, it should be possible to lock on to their signals and beam them over" Kirk reasoned.
"Yes, but time is short. If the Klingons detects them, they are dead meat"
"We will return to warp the second you touch down at flight-deck, Kirk out"
Soon after, the two shuttles landed at the yellow squares assigned to them on the flight deck. This deck was completely empty, like a supermarket warehouse with no goods. Jonas could see the silhouette of a man looking down at them from within the protective glass-wall of the observation-post that filled the inner wall. Jonas found it odd that that the flight deck was so empty. - Wasn't Enterprise supposed to have several F-class shuttles? An answer of sorts was given to him when the platform he and his shuttle rested on started to sink into the floor. He rotated the hull camera around towards Zin's ship, confirming that the same thing was happening to him. The floor-space outlined by the yellow squares were actually large elevator-platforms that lowered them down to the deck below. Jonas made a qualified guess, thinking that their system was similar to that of an air-craft carrier, one deck for launch & landing, one for maintenance and storage. As the shuttle descended into the dark and small garage below, Jonas ears picked up the welcoming sound of the warp-core engaging. The flight-deck was much closer to the engine-compartment, so down here it was a deep, almost primordial roar.
With the shuttle safely parked, Jonas hasted to the exit, teaming up with Zin out in the corridor.
"What warp-factor do you think we are holding?" Zin asked, feeling the floor vibrating under his boots.
"Judging on the sound I would say warp 6, but we are a bit more shaky than usual, so the captain might be pushing us higher. I'd guess 6,7" Jonas opined.
As soon as they rounded the corner they were stopped by a rather ordinary looking fellow who had been sent to greet them. He was wearing a yellow jumpsuit, the uniform of the engine-crew.
"Hello there" He said in a jolly tune.
"Good morning" Jonas replied.
"I was ordered to take you to the arrival lodge, please follow me"
The arrival lodge seemed to be starfleet's answer to an airport gate. The same kind of seats were lined up around the walls, and it also had a minimalistic white cup-board with all the necessary eating-gear, should one feel like ordering something from the food-synthesizer in the corner.
"Does this place have a screen?" Jonas asked their new host.
The feature-less room was completely devoid of personality. Since they might be stuck there for a while, they needed something more than just the white wall to rest their eyes on.
"Not at the moment, but I can have one brought into you" He answered in a polite and service-minded manner.
"Can you get one with a up-link to the outer hull camera-grid? we want to follow the events if we head into battle"
"On it, just stay put"
The yellow jumpsuit left them, Zin walked over to the cup-board and took out a glass. After placing it into the hatch of the synthesizer, he mumbled a series of strange and unrecognizable words, probably Bolian. The machine responded by spitting out a long and sour beep, as if it had been offended in some way.
"I don't think they have Bolian drinks programmed into that thing, your kitchen isn't all that popular among humans" Jonas told him.
"I know. Before leaving my homeworld, I stored some of my favorite meals on a disc, that's why the synthesizer back at Dontatello 2 knows how to make Bolian slush"
"Well, you can always go back to the shuttle and fetch it" Jonas proposed.
"Cant do, it blew up with the Outpost"
Zin dropped back down in his seat with a sigh, somewhat disappointed over the food-synthesizer and life in general. The arrival lodge was depressive, but it helped a lot when the yellow uniform returned, just as jolly and service-minded as he had been during their first encounter. He was carrying a reeled up flat-screen under his right arm. It looked kind of like a gigantic scroll of papyrus, main difference being that it was white on the outside and black at the inside.
"Help me get the sheet of" he said while putting it down on the floor.
The white side of the screen had a protective layer of plastic that kept the glue beneath in place. When taken of it could be rolled directly on to the wall the same way you would do with a sheet of wallpaper.
"You know what" He said while working "This was a good idea, now our guests won't get bored while waiting"
"You said it" Zin agreed.
"Anyway: The screen is touch-sensitive, and I have programmed it so that all the exterior cameras can be accessed, as well as the movies and documentaries in our library. You can't rotate or zoom with them though, image-control remains at the bridge" He explained.
"Okay, thanks" Jonas said.
"Got to run, I'm needed in engineering. See you guys around"
Their eager helper rushed out the door, heading back down to the plasma-relays, warp-core, antimatter streamers, and the rest of the dangerous stuff that was needed to push the ship through space. In the earlier days of starfleet, the radiation created in the process had been impossible to contain. The engine-crews had walked around in thick space-suits, working in rooms that nobody cared to pressurize because they were too loaded with radioactivity to breathe in anyway. These days that just occurred if there had been a leakage of some kind. Under such circumstances a helmet and atmosphere-recycler could be added on top of the yellow overalls worn by the engine-crew, hermetically sealing them from their surroundings. The engine-room was located just below their current location in the shuttle-bay. All these decks were part of the barrel-shaped secondary hull beneath the saucer-section. Down here the constant humming and vibrations produced by the engine were quite powerful, comparable to sitting close to one of those old-fashioned fossil-fuel burners at a ferryboat. Up in the saucer section it could barely be noticed as a soft background noise, and if you walked up to the top-section where the bridge was located, it could hardly be noticed at all.
"Wanna check whats on?" Zin asked, nodding towards the black screen they had hung up on the wall in front of them.
"Be my guest" Jonas answered.
Zin walked up to the screen, and awakened it with a gentle tap of the index finger. No longer pitch black, the screen lit up into a menu. It was the same classic LCARS interface that all starfleet computers and screens used. Jonas had forgotten the words hidden behind those letters a long time ago, but both he, Zin and everybody else working in starfleet were well trained in using it. Unfortunately the cameras listed in the first and only menu were named by serial-numbers rather than placement.
Zin cycled through a few of them, first displaying the aft dorsal view of the saucer-section, a camera that filmed backwards, between the nacelles. That was not what he was looking for, so he tested the number below, accessing the ventral front view instead. This was much closer to what they wanted, but for some reason it was bent downwards, filming the navigational deflector disc below rather than the view ahead. The third camera was not outside at all, but lying on a bench inside what appeared to be a workshop. The wall at the other end of the room was filled with shelves where equipment and gadgets were stored on top of each other, most of it seemed broken, probably stored here while awaiting repairs. The flickering image shifted between filming in gray-scale and dim colors. Then a khaki-colored uniformed blocked the view, and the camera was switched of. Since the connection was broken, the screen returned to the main menu.
Zin sighed, cause he still had a lot of numbers to shuffle through, all of them having meaningless names such as "DX-102-B" and "CB-445-X". Zin tested both of those, ending up with a blank screen at the first one, and a camera that filmed straight into the now closed flight-deck gates at the other. Then, suddenly and completely unexpected - they hit bulls-eye. The sixth camera on their list looked just like the main monitor on a starship was supposed to look like during warp. A blinking piece of text beneath the image informed them that this was indeed the camera currently hooked up to the bridge view-screen.
"Can you connect to their connection somehow, make us tag along to whatever camera they are using automatically?" Jonas asked.
"I don't think..." Zin's reply was cut short by a new development: They were dropping out of warp again. The stars at the screen slowed down parallel with the dwindling sound of the engines below their feet. Then a new number was added to their list cameras. The screen uttered at short beep to inform them about the newcomer, and in addition it started blinked in yellow outlining. - LCAR systems were designed so that even the bluntest of console operators would be made aware of new developments.
Zin tapped on the number, a action that brought him straight into the armory on board. The room was stacked with photon-torpedoes, elegant and streamlined objects who looked a bit like coffins. If the anti-matter warhead and impulse-engine was removed it had enough room inside for a grown man, a feature that was exploited by starfleet to do just that. Crew-members who died on board were sometimes put into a empty torpedo-holster and shoot into space using the magnetic railings within the torpedo-tubes. Jonas didn't really like that tradition. In the unlikely event that he got killed in the line of duty, he would much rather be taken home to his local graveyard to be buried in the traditional manner.
"Cool, the armory" Jonas said to himself.
That was another place in Enterprise that he had never seen - this was becoming a bit like the grand tour he never had. The torpedo that the camera was attached to was currently in transition between the right side wall-rack, and the open torpedo-track below. Since the Enterprise was a science-vessel it only had two torpedo-tracks that went parallel with each other, separated by a small console. The operator behind it - a fat man in a uniform he seemed to be bursting out of - controlled the two robotic arms in the ceiling. One of them held the torpedo in question in a tight grip between its metal claws, the other was removing the foremost torpedo from the track at his right side, that way liberating some space for the newcomer with the camera. It was put gently down in the track, and then the round lid that separated the armory from the torpedo-tube opened. It was pitch black in there, once the torpedo was pushed in and the lid had closed behind it there was nothing to see.
Weaponry was one of the subjects that had fascinated Jonas during his years at the academy, so despite the lack of illumination, he knew the basic layout and functions of the next chamber pretty well. The torpedo was now in the room known as the arming-chamber. At this place the torpedo was activated so that it could be given its final target destination and program-orders. When that was done, anti-matter from the main tanks of the ship was transferred into the containment-field of the warhead.
It could be armed with much or little - depending on the nature of the target and what one wanted to accomplish. Finally the air was sucked out of the chamber so that no atmosphere was lost when the outer lid opened. At this point everything was ready for launch, so the torpedo was rapidly accelerated up to several kilometers a second by the magnetic rails within the torpdeo-tube.
The procedure of arming and launching the torpedo happened at lighting speed, no more than three seconds. Since Enterprise it self was traveling at a speed very close to the light-barrier, the torpedo did not bother to activate its impulse engines when out in the open. Instead, the Enterprise went into a phase of deceleration, that way making sure it stayed clear of the Klingon ship that might be lurking ahead of them. Ships as big as this one had impulse-engines installed in both directions, so it had the luxury of not having to turn around when going from impulse to full stop.
"I would prefer it if the Klingons have left" Zin said while the impulse-engines sent shock-waves of sound and vibrations through the decks.
Even though he was talking to Jonas, his eyes remained fixed on the screen . About the same time as the engines died down again the torpedo traversed a small pocket of gas that caused the image to shake violently due to the sudden resistance. Luckily it took only a few seconds to pass through, the cloud turned out to be nothing more than a micro-nebula covering a radius of perhaps a few million kilometers. The clouds disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared, replaced by ordinary clear and still space.
Jonas thought about Zin's statement for a moment before answering:
"If they are gone, Kirk might go search for them, and we might have to tag along"
"Might be, I wonder what kind of assignment we will get now that our station is gone" Zin wondered.
Jonas preferred not to speculate about that. He had taken the job at the outpost because it had been at the frontier to the great and alluring unknown. Now that it was gone he would probably have to settle for something much closer to Earth, perhaps piloting a supply ship going between the central colonies, or something equally mundane. A lot of starfleet pilots ended up in such positions, even though it was considered second-rate jobs.
"Something is happening on the screen" Zin informed him.
Its sensors had detected something of interest, a illuminated frame surrounded by boxes of small-lettered text had appeared in the lower part of the image, all of it blinking simultaneously to attract the attention of the viewer. Then the camera zoomed in as far as it could, magnifying the area within the box until the stars turned into clusters of squared pixels. It was impossible to drag much info out of such a crappy image, to begin with it was only a few pixels in somewhat darker colors that deviated from the black and white ones. The picture changed as the torpedo got closer, the big pixels split into smaller ones, the colored dots gradually turned into shapes - shapes that became less grainy for every second. Zin understood the image and the bad news it carried long before Jonas did.
"Klingon bird of prey" He said.
At this point it still looked like a bad attempt at modern art to Jonas, it was not until several seconds later that the image got clear enough to interpret with any degree of certainty. A loose cluster of burnt rubble and debris was floating ahead of the enemy vessel. Its cannons and bridge-section were still aimed towards the remains of the outpost, the red-glowing impulse engines were facing Enterprise and the torpedo ahead of it.
"Well, at least it's a small one" Zin comforted himself by saying.
"How do you see?" Jonas wondered.
"Its the bridge. At the bigger battle cruisers, the neck ends in small saucer section similar to that of the Enterprise." Zin informed.
By the time he was done talking, the image had gone crystal clear, allowing Jonas to see for himself that it lacked such a feature. Like all Klingon warships it had a ball-like nodule standing out below the bridge-deck, but this was semi-triangular with a rounded front-section - definitely not a saucer. Jonas would have loved to study the design of the Klingon ship a bit more, but unfortunately the connection was broken. It was impossible to know whether this was caused by the torpedo blowing itself up, or that it had been shoot down by the Klingons. Jonas hoped for the first one, as it would allow them to rush in for a surprise-attack.
Captain Kirk and the others at the bridge were seeing precisely the same as Jonas and Zin did down in the arrival lodge.
"I believe that the torpedo self-destructed outside Klingon sensor-range" Spock said. His assessment was based on numerous factors, all blinking at his screens.
"Good work" Kirk answered in Spock's general direction.
Then he turned forward in his chair, looking towards Sulu instead
"And what is our battle-plan Sulu?"
"We are going to ram them with the deflector-shield" He answered.
"Is that so?" Kirk said, surprised by this radical and unorthodox approach.
"My proposal is that we jump out of warp as close to the Klingon's as possible, and make a drastic speed-reduction right before impact. The kinetic energy released will drastically reduce the Klingon shielding"
"In order to make as much damage as possible we should gather all of the gravitons at a single spot" Chekov shot in from the station beside him.
Since weapons and navigation would have to act in concert during a combat-situation, the bridge-designers had found it functional to put those workstations together. As the navigator on board, it was Chekov's duty to adjust the navigational deflector shield so that it correlated with the space ahead of them. If anyone, he would know how to best push a Klingon warship out of their way.
"So how is this going to work out?" Kirk asked, feeling he needed a bit more info before he could consider himself prepared.
"Well, in order to take the Klingons by surprise we need to push our engines to the very limit, so that they don't get time to raise shields once we enter their radar-range. We collide with them at one tenth impulse, at this speed our forward deflector will break us down to a full stop before it collapses, draining the Klingon shields of most of their power. I will also need to pre-program the inertial dampeners so that they keep us from flying into the wall upon impact"
Chekov was talking fast, eagerly explaining the plan in English with Russian accent. He had a somewhat boyish appearance, perhaps not so strange when having in mind that he was the youngest man on the bridge. How old was he? Twenty-five, twenty six? Kirk was only guessing. Despite his young age, Chekov was in a way a veteran among newcomers, having passed through the grades at the Enterprise before it was chosen for this high-profile mission. Since then, most of the original crew had been replaced by hot-shots like Kirk and Spock, Chekov was one of the few "natives" that starfleet had found worthy enough to keep on board.
Kirk tried to picture the plan unfolding in his head. When doing so he realized that they would have to get uncomfortably close and intimate with the Klingons in order to ram them. The forward deflector shield was only only a few kilometers ahead of them, a distance that perhaps could be stretched a bit, but if Kirk remembered correctly, five kilometers was the absolute limit.
"Wouldn't the distance get to short for photon torpedoes?" He asked.
While Kirk and Chekov had been conversing, Sulu had been busy at his console, working on - among other things - this question. By the time he had an answer ready, his screen had filled up with advanced symbols and long numbers.
"We have identified the classification and therefore also the overall weight and shield integrity of the Klingon ship. If we follow the plan we will first zap 55% of its shield, and then we will push it ahead of us. At this point we go to full stop and launch two torpedoes while rerouting energy to the phaser. The torpedoes will detonate against the enemy shields at safe distance, and then we can take out their weaponry with a few precision-shots from the phaser banks"
That clarified things a lot. Kirk was starting to like this plan, in fact he liked it a lot. Simple, bold and original. Their attack would leave those hairy and thick-headed barbarians in disarray, unable to return fire.
"Okay, look over your math one more time, and then we do this. Uhuru: you will call up Ioannis as soon as we enter the debris-field. Spock: You will trace the signal and get a lock that you transfer down to the teleporter deck so we get the scientists on board. We will also have to brief Scotty in engineering, if we want to make this a surprise we will have to be though on the engines!"
There was a lot of things to keep track on when putting an advanced maneuver like this into action. Kirk continued to bark out new orders, making the list of things that needed to be done longer and longer. His words were channeled into action all over the ship until everyone except the idle guests in the arrival lodge had their hands full. Operators were summoned to the teleporter deck in order to get the refugees from outpost 32 on board, the phaser banks were manned and checked, and the fat man in the armory prepared the upcoming torpedo-volley. Down in engineering, Scotty lit up the reserve power-plant so that it could assist the warp-core in the upcoming assault on the warp-nacelles. Up front in the barrel-shaped, secondary-hull, a team of five engineers were carrying out Chekov's orders, readjusting the deflector-disc so that the energy-barrier projected ahead of them got as small and dense as he wanted it to be.
A drawback from this reconfiguration was that the nothing kept incoming particles and debris from hitting the hull, so in order to avoid micro-fractures the main energy shield had to be activated as a compensation at vulnerable areas. This sucked energy, so gravity was reduced at all other areas than the bridge, and the lights were dimmed in order to make ends meet. Finally the back-up batteries were hooked up to the shield so that they could take a few shoots as well, just in case the Klingons against all odds would react fast enough to return fire. With the crew at energized and activated, struggling against the clock to carry out his orders, Kirk leaned back in his chair, quite happy with his commanding-abilities. It was something he had forgotten though, what was that? Oh, yeah. Off course - quite rudimentary indeed:
"Go to red alert" He said.
"Yes sir" Sulu said while hitting the button in question.
Had he remembered this earlier he would not have needed to recite so many individual orders.
At least half of them were built into the standard red-alert drill. Kirk was still quite fresh in the command-chair, he often found himself doing things in an overly complex way, or in the wrong succession. On such occasions he kept telling himself that with a bit more experience these things would become as easy as riding a bicycle. In the mean time it was comfortable to know that he had several sharp minds on board to help him out.
The ship was buzzing with activity, everyone at the bridge were working at their consoles, console-beeps mixed in with the alarm - beeps and alarms and blinking red lights on all sides. - A few hours of this was enough to make any man insane. It was a good thing then, that everyone carried out their duties with swift efficiency. Just as Kirk's head started hurting, Scotty reported that the engines were prepared - the sound of the com-line almost drowned by the alarm - ,and then Chekov screamed something about the deflector-disc.
"Ready?" Kirk shouted back, having missed most of the words.
"Ready!" Chekov yelled as high as he could.
Enterprise was set in motion according to the plan they had made for it. The massive amounts of energy consumed caused the ship to shake violently. Even if the structural integrity-field could compensate, it was unlikely that the warp-nacelles could take more than maximum half an hour before exploding. Luckily the jump would only last for twenty seconds, a clock at the forward monitor followed the countdown.
Enterprise rushed into the sensor-range of the Klingon ship at unbelievable speed, and when it jumped out of warp, they were only a few seconds away from impact. In the blink of an eye, the enemy grew out from nothingness until the red-glowing exhaust-ports of its impulse engines filled the entire main screen. During the split second it took between visual contact and collision, everyone at the bridge held their breath while clinging on to their armchairs and consoles. The computer-simulation had predicted that everything would be fine, but Kirk's guts never the less screamed to him that he was about to die. Knowledge about inertial dampeners, navigational deflector, structural integrity-field and the rest of the stuff that supposedly protected them did not help ease the instinctive fear.
When the navigational deflector of Enterprise collided with the hull-shield of the Klingons, the colliding walls of gravitons were split into smaller particles that formed a rapidly expanding shock-wave of light, heat and radiation. A flash of light filled the screen, leaving everyone at the bridge temporarily blinded. When Kirk opened his eyes again, he saw stars and planets in all the colors of the rainbow bouncing around in the bridge.
Despite the extreme physics involved, both ships survived the encounter unharmed. The speed of Enterprise was greatly reduced while the Klingons were given a powerful push away from the molten debris-field once known as "Outpost 32". The bird of prey had not reacted fast enough to avoid the collision, but now it instinctively spun around to face their adversary. Enterprise fired its volley of two torpedoes as planned, but when they had gotten half-way, a pair of disruptor-bolts was launched in the other direction.
"Embrace for impact!" Kirk screamed.
The shields buckled under the tremendous amounts of energy unleashed upon them, barely managing to dissolve the bolts before they reached the hull. In the process, Enterprise was given a powerful punch that disrupted numerous systems on board. The ship was screaming in agony, new alarms joined the constant howling of red-alert.
"Shields at 55% and holding!" Sulu screamed through the almost deafening noise.
"Take out those disruptors, do it fast!"
Since the course of action was predetermined and computer-controlled, the phasers were at it even before Kirk finished speaking. The Klingon shields had been blown away by the previous torpedo-volley, so the phasers did not have to penetrate any invisible barriers on their way in. Without shielding no hull was strong enough to withstand starship phaser-banks firing at full strength, both disruptor cannons exploded before the banks had emptied their batteries.
"Do we have a lock-on at the scientists?" Kirk screamed towards Spock.
"Soon!" Spock reassured him.
"Hurry!"
When Kirk turned his head towards the screen again, he saw that a line of three torpedoes were heading their way. If all three reached them, they would loose their shielding, and the Klingons would not hesitate to take them out.
"Evasive maneuver!" He instinctively screamed towards Chekov.
"No point sir!" He answered.
Chekov had no time to explain, but the Klingon ship was simply way too close, and Enterprise was too big a target. All three torpedoes hit, collapsing the forward shield. What felt like a massive earth-quake rippled throughout the ship, causing fires and injuries on several decks. A panel exploded inside the bridge, instantly filling the room with smoke. The explosion came from somewhere behind the captains chair, so Kirk figured that it was either the life-support console or interior monitor that had given up on them. Neither consoles were important in the heat of battle, and as long as the security-guards managed to put out the fire it was nothing he needed to concern himself with.
"Take out their torpedo-bay!" Kirk screamed while two guards in red shirts rushed into the bridge behind him, both of them carrying fire-extinguishers.
"On it!" Sulu answered.
Both forward phaser-banks had recharged by now, but Sulu needed only one of them to cut his way through the round nodule under the bridge-deck. The torpedoes had been launched through a circular hole in it's front, so it was natural to assume that the armory laid behind it. A high-pressure fountain of molten metal and red-glowing debris shot through the hole that the phaser had cut out, but Kirk had expected an even bigger explosion. Had they caused an anti-matter leakage, the Klingon ship may very well have disappeared in a flash of pure energy. This however, was not what Kirk wanted. Starfleet needed to know why the Klingons had they attacked a Human outpost in neutral space, and the Klingons had to be alive in order to explain them selves.
With both disruptor-cannons and the armory destroyed, the Klingons had only one weapon left. The small phaser bank that was bolted into its belly had so far been hidden out of view, but now the bird of prey rotated upwards so that it got a clear line of fire. Enterprise's port phaser-bank disappeared in a violent explosion that created a gaping crater that dug itself into several decks. Sulu did not need an order to take out the opposing phaser, causing a similar explosion at the other ship.
"They must not escape! Take out one of their warp-nacelles!" Kirk ordered.
Now that the enemy had been robbed of their weaponry, he wanted to cripple them and beam over the crew for questioning.
"Yes sir!"
Sulu thought for a split second about which method to use before he decided to utilize the unharmed twin-phasers at the underside of the saucer section. The other alternatives had been to launch a torpedo with the minimal amount of anti-matter required, or to wait until the remaining top-side phaser-bank had recharged. Sulu's instincts told him that both these methods would be slower than the one he had landed on, so he rolled the ship over, making the belly of the saucer-section face the enemy ship. He got a lock on at the nacelle, but as the phaser-bank charged, the Klingon ship jumped to warp. It stretched into a long green line heading out and away. At this time the power build-up within the phaser-emitter had already reached the focal-point, so the process could no longer be reversed or aborted. The yellow beam of dense nadion-radiation was released into the eternity of empty space ahead of them. Such misfires were not only a waste of energy, but also a potential hazard for living creatures if it hit a populated planet or asteroid - phaser-beams could travel several light-years before loosing their destructive edge.
"Run a check on that beam" Kirk mumbled.
Somebody had quelled the alarms, so there was no need to scream anymore. It went almost without saying, that the return to normality felt... relieving, VERY relieving. Chekov had the star-charts at his panel, so he was best suited for the task.
"It wont hit anything sir" He said after a quick check.
"Good. Congratulations people, we have just won our first battle. Excellent work" Kirk said with pride in his voice, even though it was also a bit shaky.
This had been a close call, his hearth-rate had been sky-high through the whole battle, and it would probably remain so for several more minutes.
"Any casualties?" He asked while trying to calm down.
"Two dead sir, we lost both phaser-operators when the port bank exploded" Spock informed.
"There are also coming in reports of minor injuries throughout D and E deck" He added as the info popped up at his screen.
"Dr Bones have some work to do then. Have we beamed aboard the scientists?" Kirk wondered, automatically moving down to the next point on his list.
"Yes sir, they are at the transporter deck" Spock said.
His voice was as calm and flat as ever, it was as if the battle had not affected him at all. Vulcans were known throughout the alpha quadrant for their lack of emotions, or alternatively their lack of ways to express them. This was a much debated question among Humans, but Kirk was pretty certain that there was more to Spock than pure and cold logic, even if it was difficult to detect. Spock was after all only half-Vulcan, it was his human half that had drawn him towards starfleet and human affairs. All the pure-blooded Vulcans with minds as sharp as his preferred the science-academy at their homeworld.
"Dead or alive?" Kirk inquired.
"All are alive and unharmed sir" Spock answered.
"Excellent! I'm going down to meet our new guests, you guys stay put in case the Klingons return"
Leaving the bridge felt good. The venting-system was efficient enough to remove the smoke emitted by the console that had exploded behind him, but the smell of burnt plastic and extinguisher-powder remained. Kirk was happy to see that the turbo-lift had remained fully operational throughout their brush with death. It took him downwards and landed him gently in the transporter-room without as much as a squeak.
The room that he now entered was full of new faces, all them wearing the space-suits that they had arrived in. Half of them was dressed in the new gray slim-fits, the same suits that the Enterprise was equipped with. The other half wore the older, somewhat more bulky and robust type. These oddly colored relics from the past - black and red in this example - where suits that Kirk had not seen since his academy-years. The newcomers had all removed their helmets, revealing the faces beneath. Other than the gray-haired professor-type, the two aliens where the only one to stick out from the rather ordinary looking crowd of Humans. Kirk counted one hot looking Orion girl - smooth, green skin across her sweet face - and one Denobulan man that stared upon him with blue eyes that were as sharp as his facial ridges Everyone attention had been drawn to the sound of the door as it slid open, their eyes followed Kirk in silence as he stepped out of the elevator.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Enterprise" He said with a loud and clear voice.
