13: RETURN OF THE ...

We were in orbit above the moon base known as Alpha, late of the 22nd century. But it was Stardate 13750. The original crew had an interesting story, as they only left the solar system 7 years ago, according to their clocks. For most everyone else, 5 centuries had passed by. I wasn't the only one unstuck in time. The situation was somewhat grim. We were in the middle of hostile territory, with a damaged starship. Two things were wrong with it. First there was a section of hull missing, and we need 23 meters of plasma conduit to join the warp core to the nacelles. For the first problem we could only seal off the missing space. The second was just a matter of time and materials to make up some conduit. We were 'relaxing' from our combat status while hanging out with the Alphans. We needed tri-titanium for our plasma conduits, which the Alphans could provide, but at a slow rate. But we were intermingling with their crews, as we all were lost 'humans' trying to find our home. It was like finding another base full of kindred spirits, to us.

Three weeks after we arrived at Alpha our ship was as repaired as it was going to be, outside of a shipyard. We had warp drive back online as well as half of our transporters. The port side emitters happened to be on the now-missing section of the hull. That left us with our starboard transporters still operational. The plasma conduits also brought our wing phasers back online, and we refilled our 'hot' torpedo magazines, just in case. It turned out that that was a good idea. I was in Alpha's command center when my communicator beeped.

"We have a new vessel entering the system." It was Loran.

"Can you patch the scan through to the main viewer here?" Soon there was an image of an unfamiliar ship on the command center's main screens. The Alphans went deathly quiet, as they obviously recognized it. "That bad, huh?" I broke into their silence.

"That's a Dorcon ship!" Maya gasped.

"At least that pins down where we are," I stated.

"And how does it do that?" Koenig asked.

"Rumor has it that there is a common Sidon – Dorcon border on the opposite side of Sidon space from the Federation. At least according to the Gorn there is.

"Yea, well what do you know about Meson converters?" Tony asked.

"Well, the Federation has done some research on using them as a warp core, but that was over 50 years ago. They abandoned that design as they already had a superior dilithium moderated generation-4 warp core in their starships."

"And what about your ship?"

"My ship sports photon torpedoes and a trigger happy helmsman," I joked.

"Maya's not safe here," Tony stated.

"That much is certain. That ship would slice through your defenses like a hot knife through butter," I answered as I pulled out my communicator. "John, I have one to beam up." Then I tossed the communicator to Maya. "Catch."

Maya caught the communicator, and then the shimmer of the transporter field surrounded her a moment later.

Just after Maya disappeared the Dorcon ship actually faded out, only to reappear over the base. "Well that's a neat trick. I guess we won't be fighting them at impulse!" That was a trick that I had not seen before. Best way to describe it would be an inverse transporter. Now the ship just sat there.

Allan finally asked, "What are they waiting for, Commander?"

"I don't know. But they should be transporting down soon."

"I bet that that little trick of theirs has a cycle time on their gravitational emitters. You can't just beam your ship across a solar system and expect transporters to be ready to go." Eventually a blue continuous beam connected the Dorcon ship and the base. Three individuals appeared in command center, a tall humanoid woman, flanked by two guards.

"I am Consul Vass, of the Federated Worlds of Dorcon," the lady said.

"We know why you are here, Consul Vass. There are no Psychons here." Koenig replied.

"When I confirm that, I will leave you in peace." She then activated a wrist mounted device, and panned a beam across all the people there, then pointed it at me.

"Strange, you are not a Psychon, but I don't get a reading on you."

"That's because I'm actively blocking it," I replied. I made a spectacle of placing my tricorder, on the desk in front of me. The guards started toward me. "Stand down your guards before you lose them." Consul Vass said nothing. Fine, lets see what a fast draw and some fast nadions could do. At this range I just flashed the phasers from the hip, and to the surprise of everyone else, both guards dropped to the ground like sacks of potatoes. "I did warn you."

"Who is this?" Consul Vass demanded of Koenig.

"I am Commodore Michael, commander of the R.C.S. Faraway Quest," I answered.

"R.C.S.?" she queried.

"Rim Worlds Confederate Ship."

"So ... there is no Psychon on this base because you have her on your ship."

"Very astute –"

"Where is your ship then 'Commodore'?" Vass finally demanded.

"Most likely beating your ship into snail snot by now," I concluded. The consul pressed another button on her wrist. Nothing happened. She tried again.

"Incoming signal commander," Alibe stated.

"On screen," Koenig ordered.

Sara appeared sitting in the captain's chair. Even Consul Vass was impressed. "Lieutenant Sara! Where's John?" I queried.

"He's on board the Quannarion," Sara answered. "He's currently in command of it. I will have him patched in."

"I guess they decided not to beat the snot out if it after all," I mentioned to the consul. A moment later both Sara and John were up on split-screen. John was on the Dorcon operations deck with Brent and two other Mek-Tacs. While the Dorcon transport beam was active their shields weren't, so the Mek-Tacs all beamed over and boarded it. This wasn't the first time an alien crew was taken out by the Mek-Tacs. "How goes the battle?"

"Short and sweet. The Dorcons are all trussed up and under guard. Their current Archon is also on board. He is being confined to his quarters," John answered.

"There are three Dorcons currently on Alpha. When Consul Vass' guards wake up we will be beaming up to the Quannarion," I decided. "We'll use our transporters." I wasn't going to use one that requires a continuous wave stabilizer, not when my own transporters were miles better.

When the guards awoke from their overly heavy stun blasts, Consul Vass, her guards, Koenig, and myself beamed first into one of our transporter rooms, then to her operations center. The only part of my ship that the Dorcons saw was the transporter controller and two heavily armed guards, both Psychon, who joined us on the pad. Dorcon ships have a different design philosophy. They have an operations center instead of a separate bridge and engineering control room. Apparently many of their systems were built using the combined usage design.

"Well, this is it," John stated. "The main controller for their meson converter. Unfortunately for them they cant walk and chew gum at the same time."

"What do you mean?" I asked while Vass and her guards were led away.

"Basically they have only one main power source. This meson converter powers the entire ship," Brent explained. "Unlike our ship there is no impulse or any other backup that we can find. They have a single nuclear battery backing up life support but that's it."

"So they actually have no impulse engines..."

"None at all. They have the meson converter feeding into one set of warp coils at the ships' aft. Then they feed the meson converters power into a massive set of capacitor banks for their continuous wave transporter, and can wormhole the entire ship through space. The maximum range is about 7 AU, if you are not picky about the accuracy of your destination. The same system us used to directly work as their ships transporter beam – they only have the one. Then it's thrusters."

"So what is this ships combat capability?" I asked.

"The ships deflectors are gen-3, providing a total protection factor of about 45 to 50. She is armed with both beam and pulse disruptors, having the firepower of a D-7A. Top speed is warp 6.5, but that's a continuous number. The warp coils are extra-heavy, small nacelle type. The converter is also oversized. It actually produces more juice than the 'Quest."

"Well, this ship is larger than the 'Quest," I replied. "Even with a top end of 6.5 that would take ... over 100 gigawatts for a ship this size."

"That meson converter pumps out over 200!" Brent exclaimed. "And the meson decay is required by the transporter system."

"So what are we going to do with this ship and the Dorcons?" John Koenig asked.

"Pull their teeth and kick them out. Brent I want you to disable their weapons and that transporter system. Then we will explain to the Dorcons the terms of their parole."

The Psychons escorted Consul Vass and the Archon back to their own operations center, ironically. "I do not usually find myself under the guard of a Psychon," the Archon stated.

"You'd better get used to that if you try to go after them again. First off, you no longer have weapons or transporters. Secondly, New Psychonia is a member of the Rim Worlds Confederacy, and guess what. You're playing with the big boys now. Your technology isn't at the top of the heap anymore. You have the Gorn to the south of you, and the Romulans to the rim of you. If you try to cross either of their territories, they will kick your ass so hard you will be farting out the top of your head." I left him with that particular image as I went on, "You're being allowed to leave, and I don't want to see you back. The next time you show up the 'Quest will simply take you out. She's chewed up entire fleets of ships like this one. Just be lucky that my X.O. decided a nice safe boarding was in, instead of just wiping the floor with you. You at least will be able to leave. The ship is yours." With that, we beamed out, leaving the Dorcons to their own devices.

"Could you have taken them out that easily?" Koenig asked while we were in the transporter room. The two of us were beaming back down to Alpha.

"At point blank range trading alpha strikes, they would barely survive the first one. The second would turn them into vapor. We've seen their weapons. Our shields will stop their entire alpha strike," I responded.

"So you weren't kidding about your ships' capabilities."

"No. The 'Quest is a gen-5 heavy cruiser. Currently the only thing wrong with her is a missing chunk of hull." We were watching the Quannarion limp to the hyper limit on thruster power. It would take them about a day on thrusters. And no I didn't feel sorry about them. I knew about the Dorcons from Amek when he was aboard the 7th Sister.

At that point we decided to work on improving the defenses of Alpha. The quickest way to bring up their firepower was to send down all of the photon missiles, and build a launcher for them. That also meant sending down the three thunderbolt fighters, as those missiles were their main armament. Allan decided to train on one of the fighters. Both the launcher and the fighters were based on the science outpost overlooking the base. A deflector shield was also installed both for defense and in case a mishap occurred with the missiles, which had to be brought down hot. No point in accidentally blowing up the entire base. Increasing the power of the bases shielding proved more difficult. Power was sufficient from the nuclear reactors, but we had to build each from scratch from materials mined in the catacombs. A month later we were finished, and that left all of us wondering what the Sidons were up to.

It wasn't long before we found out what the Sidons were up to. Apparently the destroyer managed to get a communication out, which must have included some telemetry about our skirmish. There were back, and this time in force. Seven ships were rolling in, with a dreadnought as flagship. There were two cruisers, larger than the destroyer that we encountered before, and a destroyer of the same class as the one we took out. The remaining three ships were escorts, and they were the smallest in that fleet.

Not Good, I thought. There's enough firepower to take all of us out, if they play their cards right. "Nergat, I need you to take out the 'Sister..."

"On my way," Nergat replied.

"What if I assist him?" Sara asked.

"Only if you're sure you can survive the vacuum of space. This might be a one way trip," I warned.

"I can survive with your life link for many hours," Sara responded. "You might want a pain-killer in hand just in case."

"Make sure you both have ELT's with you at ALL times," I ordered.

"Aye, aye," was the response from both of them. They realized that the 'Sister may well be destroyed in this battle. Yet the Battlegrace Angel and the Horta were willing to take that risk. If any of my crew would survive a ship being blasted out from under them it was Sara and Nergat.

We had the Faraway Quest, a gen-5 heavy cruiser, the 7th Sister, a gen-6 specialty small ship, and three Thunderbolt fighters against a dreadnought, two cruisers, a destroyer, and 3 escorts, all gen-3. This would be definitely interesting, if nothing else. The most powerful ship was definitely the 'Quest, but the next in line was definitely the dreadnought. The 'Sister was actually more powerful than the escorts, but there were three of them.

As the fleet moved in, the 'Sister detached and was flying in formation with the 'Quest. Then the Sidon fleet broke into two elements. Their opening move was a tactical error that decided the fight then and there. The first flight had the dreadnought, one cruiser, the destroyer, and an escort. The other had the second cruiser, and the two remaining escorts. The 'Sister would engage the lone cruiser and her escorts, while I would take on the dreadnought.

I was going for a 'in-your-face' style of conflict with the Sidons. We simply ran down their throats, and engaged the dreadnought directly. With a full hot magazine we effectively had 4 forward torpedo tubes until the first 40 torpedoes were launched. That's a lot of torpedoes! Although it was larger than the 'Quest, it wasn't that much larger, and it was two generations of ship lower than the 'Quest. The first thing I did was 'roll ship' so I would engage only the dreadnought on the first pass. We flipped over, presenting our shield poles to the escorting fleet. The only ship we engaged was the DN. Even with its aura of toughness, it was little more than a gen-3 heavy cruiser, barely 20% larger than the 'Quest. We closed to point blank range and dropped an alpha strike into her. With double torpedoes, we smashed through her shields and started our mauling. Three of our four torpedoes hit, the third one smashing through her shields and blasting a hole in her hull. Then came the phasers, all 12 of them, smashing ships systems and rendering her useless. Much to the surprise of the Sidons, our forward shields barely held from the dreadnought's onslaught, meaning we passed through their fleet essentially unscathed. Rolling the ship had prevented any attacks from the escorts from getting through. But it meant that all our shields were down, and we needed a long 'swing around ' to let our shields regenerate.

We swung around in a wide arc to engage the next ship. Our shields weren't completely up but we had no choice, the next target was the cruiser. The smaller ship suffered from the ability to block the heavy hitting photon torpedoes. The first brought down her shields, and the other three were on target. By the time the phasers had fired, she was a hulk. But this pass stripped our shields and left us open to counterattack. At least the only ships left in this fleet were the destroyer and the escort, and both were smaller than the 'Quest. No guts, no glory. It would probably hurt, but we needed to take out those two ships. Our shields were down but our weapons were superior to the Sidon ships. Back down their throats, with a full alpha strike as our hot torpedo magazine was less than half empty.

This time we traded like for like. We had the firepower advantage needed to slice through their shields, but our shields were shredded. We felt their return fire. Alarms sounded through out the bridge as systems took hits. At least our ship was tough, and after wiping out the destroyer and escort, we were relatively intact, with some systems damaged, but none fatally. Now it was time to look for the other ships.

There was no sign of the 7th Sister. But then again there was no sign of the other cruiser. One of the escorts escorting the cruiser was also missing, apparently taken out by the thunderbolt fighters. The last escort was over Alpha, bombarding it. We headed in to an attack run and when we had the range we opened fire with our torpedoes. The last Sidon exploded. The attack was over. The base was in dire shape, and the 'Sister was missing. We found two ELT's and beamed aboard the 'Quest Sara and Nergat. My Mission class courier was toast. Sara sent it in on a collision with the cruiser, and Nergat beamed them out at the last second. Only one Thunderbolt fighter remained from the Alpha contingent and the ground launcher was also destroyed, along with the entire science station. As we returned to orbit, we found that Alpha itself was done. The main life support and the main power reactors were knocked out. We took Allan on board bay #1 with the last remaining Thunderbolt Fighter. The final score was the 'Quest suffered only moderate damage to her systems. She would still be operational for rescue operations. The only remaining ships were 1 Thunderbolt fighter, which Allan Carter landed in shuttle bay #1, and the 'Quest herself. We sent down all available shuttles to Alpha. Then we beamed down to see for our self the damage. The base was in dire straits. Much of the structure was uninhabitable, and the main power reactors were knocked out. I joined the Alphans in their conference.

"Look, the base is dead. Just face it." I stated. All your power systems are out, and most of your life support has been destroyed. In 6 hours this place is going to resemble a frozen pizza. It's time to leave..."

John Koenig reluctantly agreed. At least there was a place to evacuate to, the R.C.S. Faraway Quest. The Alphans made arrangements to beam up to the 'Quest, and journey with us back to Earth based territory.

The long journey home was underway. We were traversing Sidon space on a direct return line to Federation space. We were deep in enemy territory, but we had an advantage, that of speed. We could simply overrun any opposition that we met, and used our speed advantage to avoid contacts in the first place. The major problem was the fact that we had to cross over 90 parsecs of Sidon space. Even at warp 8 that would take 30 days. Those would be 30 mail-biting days. We were not equipped to take on the entire Sidon fleet! The trip actually took 44 days, as we flew a path that avoided F, G, and K main sequence stars, and their inhabited worlds. Even then we were in four skirmishes. But that was all they were. We traded rounds en passant but didn't stop to engage, leaving our pursuers in our dust. As soon as each group fell out of sensor range a drastic course change and we were again lost in the vast darkness.

Now we were at a dead stop. Just outside the Branzdon system. Good thing our sensors are better than the Sidons. They had decided that their fleet would mass at the colony of Branzdon III. Since they couldn't catch the 'Quest, the set up a web to catch her at the very end of Sidon space. It was a straight line from here to Federation Starbase 34. What bought us to a screeching halt was also the reason the Sidons wanted anything to do with a Psychon. There were 4 Dorcon ships at main command centers of the web. The Dorcons have some kind of treaty with the Sidons. And was why the last eagle was spared. That also meant another threat: Gravitic mines. We knew the Dorcons have them from their own database. The only effective way to prevent us from blasting through their web would be gravitic mines.

That's a nice Christmas present for someone.

We were in the briefing room. "We have two options. Ramrod through the web, or go around it," John concluded. "If we ramrod through we should punch through where a group of ships already is. That way if they have set up a minefield any other ships of theirs will have to cross it themselves."

"Good idea but what if they placed mines in front or behind their ship groupings. The only way to get a good look at their web's structure is to waltz up to it. Exactly what we don't want to do," replied Allan. Allan had by this time decided to stay on with the crew of the 'Quest.

"Actually there is another way to get a good look at that web. Time-lapse interferometry," I informed Allan.

"But to get the synthetic aperture we need, we would have to use the impulse engines, and risk discovery," John added.

"And you can't just go around it," Sara interjected.

And just what do you know about starship combat tactics? I thought.

"I might not know about multi-ship tactics, but I am an arial combatant, and I have seen this web pattern before. It's a sun-web," Sara responded. Oops. I forgot about the telepathic part of the life link. Better not think that loudly. "A sun web is designed to funnel its prey to another waiting trap."

"And the Sidons would pile all these resources up just to get us?"

"No, but the Dorcons would to get a hold of the last available Psychons. In fact I'm surprised that they didn't pull out all the stops on this one, since they are involved. We'll go with the time-lapse scans.

I ordered the beta shift, currently on the bridge to run a scan at impulse but the course was backwards, almost directly away from the web. We waited for the data to be processed.

"Suggestions?" I asked.

"We could take a week and go completely around it," John stated.

"Or we could punch through here," Sara pointed at a small group of ships. "We would drop to impulse here and cross this minefield, then take those ships in a running battle at warp."

Sara favored the direct approach, and never shied away from a fight. Then I noticed something. "Take a look at the scans of Branzdon itself. Tell me what you see."

"There's a lot of civilian shipping in there," Allan stated. "Take a look at that stack of Dorcon freighters. And if they are only one stage of a relay..."

"Then the minefield could be big enough to take a week to go around," John concluded. "We don't have a week. They can do math and can figure out how far we have gone. They would be pulling in patrol ships and the chances of not being spotted are bad. There is enough firepower in any part of that web to intercept us if we are spotted."

Sara chimed in. "Take a look at these Sidon freighters here. They are leaving Branzdon. There doesn't appear to be any mines in their paths."

"That probably is because there aren't any. With that much freighter traffic in the system they could bomb one of their own ships by mistake..."

The room went silent as everybody almost could hear the gears turning in my head.

Sara finally said, "You've got that look."

"Yeah, It just might work," I stated. "Sail right through the Branzdon system at sub-light while going completely doggo.

"But if they do discover us we're toast."

"But they can't unless they almost collide with us."

"How long from dark till we spool up the engines?"

"20 minutes."

"That's to long."

"We could do it the moment it looks like we were discovered."

"How minimal would power use be?"

"Just heat and oxygen. No exterior lights or gravitic emissions."

"Not even gravity?"

"Not if we're truly doggo."

"And we go on cold rations," I concluded. "The question is, can we make it through the Branzdon system?"

"Yes," answered K'tee. "You've done it before."

"No, the risk is too great," John answered. He was an experienced navy guy. But we had done this before, in fact half of my bridge crew were experts at it, and I informed John of the fact. "You're that confident?" He finally asked.

"Yes I am," I stated matter of factly.

"World hates a coward," He finally relented.

We were tumbling down the darkness at an almost relativistic speed as we passed through the Branzdon system. All energy signatures on board the 'Quest were shut down. No running lights, no warp or impulse power, no artificial gravity. The crew had to float to their stations! No smooching this time. Interior lights were at a minimum, and only basic passive scanners were active. We were passing through the system as a 'hole' in space. Much to everyone's relief, we passed through the system uneventfully. Nobody knew we were there.

Maybe we got too complacent. Maybe it was just dumb luck. Whatever it was, it was bad. After leaving the Branzdon system and reactivating our systems, we sped away from the system towards Federation space and Starbase 34. Then we hit a gravitic mine, a really big one, out in the middle of nowhere, 1 parsec away from Branzdon. But there it was, bringing the 'Quest to a stop. Alarms sounded throughout the bridge. Our warp drive was damaged, but it was still operational, a testament to the toughness of the ship. But the entire Sidon fleet knew where we were. And they peeled out of their formations to come after us.

We actually were still in fine shape. Even with the damage from the gravitic mine we were still capable of about warp 6, and that was still faster than the Sidon ships, unless they redlined their engines. The Dorcons had a speed advantage, and they all were behind us. The chase was on. Unfortunately the starbase was 29 parsecs away. That would bring the chase up to 16 days in length. The Dorcon could catch us in just over 3.

And he was chasing. Foolish. But the Dorcons never faced us in combat and none of the Sidons had seen us fire our aft torpedo tubes. They might assume our heavy firepower is forward like the majority of starships. Like theirs. Our omega strike was 80% as powerful as our alpha strike, powerful enough to smash through the shields of a modern heavy cruiser, like our own. And our shields were more than double theirs.

There was an 'interesting' signal on our scanners, five days after dealing with the Dorcon. We were closing on a starship, it seemed. As we closed we detected the ship on our scanners – a Ranger class scout. It was just sitting there, almost exactly half way between Starbase 34 and Branzdon. That's a strange place to put a starship, I thought. If the Sidons were still following us we had at least 12 hours before they would get here. So we dropped out of warp and scanned the ship. It's impulse engines were up but the warp drive was down. There were no life signs onboard, but the life support system was functioning properly. We beamed over, John, Sara, and myself.

Lighting levels on board were minimal; the ships life support was in a night-shift mode. We headed to the bridge. The bridge was no larger than the 'Sister's used to be. The computers were locked down. Time to try a Section-31 code. That was just like saying "open sesame". I checked the running processes and orders for the ship.

"I found out why she's here, and 33 of her sisters. They're the Federations' answer to the Sidon minefield."

"I assume the Federation doesn't use mines?" Sara asked.

"They do in wartime. But they are vigilant in taking them down afterwards," John answered.

I sat down at the communications console. "Lets fire this thing up, patch in the other ships into this array, and make some long distance calls." I was busy programming and sending out prefix codes. Soon I had a 34-ship subspace array. I sent out a message to New Psychonia, and found that the Transport tug was available, and had it sent to Starbase 34 at top speed. Even at warp 12 it would take 36 days to go there. Nobody was returning my calls from Caractacalla, but Admiral Halfview sent regards and congratulations upon reading my executive summary of events. Apparently in my absence the rest of our advance fleet withdrew to Thule, joined up with four more cruisers and the Confederate Union and proceeded to turn the Tholians into scrap, when they played their trump card. The Avens had took a gamble and sent 10 of the 12 Akazi's they had built and sent them to Thule!

BEEP. Sara checked the scanners. "The sensors are picking up a fleet of Sidon ships, half a parsec out."

"Time to go," I stated while shutting down the comm. boards. I returned the fleet to its automatic mode, and we beamed back to the 'Quest.

7 days later we arrived at Starbase 34. This is where we said goodbye to most of the Alphans. From here they were in the Federation, and could get passage back to Earth, or just about anywhere. Most of them were "adventured out", while some found relatives from the 27th century. Maya, wanted to go to New Psychonia, and Tony was going wherever Maya was. The only other Alphan who decided to go to the rim, was Allan Carter. I just hoped that it wasn't the fact that we rescued those three from their crippled eagle. A month passed by and we were setting up the connections between the 'Quest and the transport. Our return trip at warp 8 took over two months.