ACT FOUR

The sound of the com chirp caused him to jump in surprise.

Seated in the cramped ready room of the UES Triton, Commander Aidan Cross looked up from the department reports on his tiny desk, momentarily glad for the brief reprieve. The level of readiness throughout the ship didn't worry him, even with the damage that was still not repaired; all of the department heads were combat veterans, and only the newest of them hadn't been aboard during Black's Bungle. At any other time, Aidan would have even been a little giddy at having being given his own command, but several years of experience aboard Columbia had clearly spoiled him. Everywhere he looked, he found himself comparing the oldest Neptune-class still in service to his previous ship.

Columbia won every time.

"What the hell did I do to deserve this?" he asked the empty air as he reached for the comm panel. His first command was supposed to be Columbia after Captain Hernandez was promoted to commodore or decided to retire, not a first generation Neptune-class that had been in service before Aidan entered college.

"This is Cross," he said into the comm-line. "Status report."

"Incoming message from Fleet Command," the voice of Triton's communications officer echoed from the wall panel, and Aidan straightened slightly in his seat. A communique from Command could only mean one thing - Admiral Archer.

"Patch it through," Cross ordered. For less than a heartbeat, he considered adding the comm officer's rank before realizing that he still didn't know it. It was frustrating: on Columbia, he had known every officer and enlisted man or woman by name and face. Here, he barely recognized the department heads and was still struggling with their names. Barely thirty seconds after Cross spoke, Admiral Archer's face appeared on the computer display.

"Commander," the admiral said in greeting, a grim expression on his face. The older man didn't waste time on pleasantries. "We've located the Romulan ship." Archer glanced to someone off-screen, before continuing. "It's the Saratoga,"

Icy shock pulsed through Cross, and he blinked in stunned surprise as he tried to comprehend what he had just heard. His eyes narrowed.

"Are you sure?" he asked, and Archer nodded.

"We're uploading the data to you now," the admiral replied. "Endeavour will be in weapons range in ten minutes and I've redirected all other ships to your location." Aidan swallowed, finally recognizing why Archer was telling him this. Triton was the closest ship to the Romulan vessel, and a single Neptune-class couldn't successfully tackle a bird of prey alone. The admiral was ordering them into harm's way, knowing that there was a strong possibility that they would not survive.

Aidan couldn't imagine having to make such a difficult choice.

"Understood, sir." Cross drew himself upright. "We'll hold them until Endeavour arrives."

"Good hunting, Commander." The tightness in Archer's face was obvious, and Aidan suddenly remembered the rumors surrounding the man and Captain Hernandez. He found himself hoping that those rumors weren't accurate after all.

"Thank you, sir. Triton out." Aidan was heading toward the door before the screen even blanked out. He stepped through the doorway and onto the bridge, noting the already tense atmosphere present. "Battle stations," he ordered as he moved to the command chair. "Helm, set an intercept course with the UES Saratoga, maximum impulse," Aidan continued. He dropped into the chair and primed the ship's log for ejection. "Tactical, lock onto Saratoga and fire as soon as we're in range."

"Sir?" The ensign manning the tactical board had a horrified expression on her face, and Cross gave her a sharp glance.

"It's not the Saratoga," he revealed grimly. Glancing in the direction of the science officer, Aidan spoke again. "TacOps," he demanded.

Instantly, the main viewscreen snapped to life, revealing a tactical operations display of the immediate area. Covering little more than 25,000 kilometers, the display gave Aidan an overview of the environment in which they would be engaging the Romulan ship. He grit his teeth at the massive sensor distortions already being caused by their proximity to the asteroid belt; many of the ores within the belt would cause havoc with Triton's sensors, and he found himself hoping that the Romulan ship would have the same problems.

"Incoming from Saratoga," the communications officer announced. He was a skinny junior lieutenant who looked much younger than his twenty-five years. "Audio only," the lieutenant added with some surprise. For Cross, that confirmed more than any data Starfleet Command had sent.

"Weapons range in twenty seconds," the ensign at tactical said in response to Aidan's look. Nodding, Cross leaned back in his command chair.

"No response," he told the communications officer. On the tactical display, the image representing the Saratoga was beginning to maneuver toward the asteroid belt, clearly intending on using it as cover. Here we go, Aidan told himself as he gripped the armrests of the command chair. A beep from the tactical board informed him that they were in weapons range. "All weapons: fire," he ordered.

Phase cannon fire sliced out, burning through the hard vacuum, even as a pair of Mark VI photonic torpedoes rumbled from Triton's launch tubes. The Saratoga – or rather, the image of the old Iceland-class – twisted into a spiraling dive as the twin warheads corkscrewed toward it. Bright green bursts of disruptor fire flashed from the pursued ship's guns even as the false holographic image surrounding it flickered and died, revealing a bird of prey. Romulan point-defense systems opened up, ripping apart the two torpedoes before they could get within a hundred kilometers of their intended target.

Diving around one of the seemingly motionless asteroids, the bird of prey accelerated deeper into the asteroid belt, and Aidan frowned darkly. Navigation through the field wouldn't be that hard – the density of the material within the belt was so low that the odds of a collision were less than one in a billion – but the difficulty of detecting and targeting the Romulan ship would only increase the deeper they went.

Even as Triton banked into the asteroid field, the bird of prey was disappearing around one of the larger asteroids, engines burning bright against the darkness of space. Proximity alarms began sounding throughout Triton's bridge as the navigational deflector array began sucking up power to protect the ship from stellar debris tumbling through the belt. Aidan pressed a single button on the command chair controls, silencing the alarms instantly.

Spinning along its horizontal axis, the Romulan bird of prey suddenly raced back into view as it climbed over a twenty kilometer wide asteroid that sensors identified as 434 Hungaria. Disruptor cannons barking, the bird of prey accelerated toward Triton with frightening agility and grace. The searing energy slammed into Triton's polarized hull with explosive results; great chunks of hull plating were simply vaporized under the incredible heat of the directed energy beams, and the venerable Neptune-class shuddered under the fierce onslaught. A second salvo sliced into Triton's lower hull, completely incinerating one of the hull polarization systems.

"Return fire!" Cross shouted. The urge to displace the tactical officer was nearly overwhelming, but he suppressed it even as he issued additional orders. "Full evasive!"

Phase cannon fire briefly sketched out an outline of the nearly invisible force screen that surrounded the Romulan bird of prey, and Aidan swallowed a curse. Attempts to add a shield system to the old Neptunes had consistently met with failure, and were one of the reasons that they fought in groups of two or more. Alone, a Neptune, especially one as old as the Triton, was no match for a bird of prey, despite their similarities in size and mass.

Another salvo of disruptor fire slammed into Triton, this time carving a jagged scar along the entire hull and punching into the superstructure. Polarization systems began to fail shipwide, and hull breach alarms began shrieking their clarion cry. Like a wounded animal, Triton twisted into a spinning dive to avoid fire, even as her phase cannons continued to fire, uselessly pouring energy into the defensive screen that protected the Romulan ship. A hollow thrum sounded through the deckplates as another pair of torpedoes surged from the launch tubes; both were torn apart by the Romulan P-Def system almost instantly.

434 Hungaria loomed in front of Triton, its jagged surface shuddering as disruptor beams that missed the Neptune-class slammed into the asteroid. Chunks of reddish rock were torn free from the asteroid and sent spinning through the void as the bird of prey slid into a pursuit course behind Triton, disruptor cannons still barking fire. Why haven't they used torpedoes? Aidan wondered as the helmsman sent the Neptune-class into a steep, twisting climb to evade the enemy's shots. The inertial dampeners struggled with the abrupt change, and gravity pushed Cross back into the command chair.

Lethal fire continued to rain from the bird of prey, stabbing through the endless night and into the superstructure of Triton. An explosion rocked the Starfleet vessel as a disruptor beam burned into the port nacelle. Warp plasma ignited suddenly, ripping the nacelle apart with a flash of azure fire, and sending burning shrapnel into the already weakened hull. The force of the detonation sent Triton spinning out of control as maneuvering thrusters misfired and the impulse manifold fractured.

Clinging to his command chair, Aidan stared in horror as the Neptune-class ship tumbled toward 434 Hungaria. Alarms were shrieking as the crew struggled to regain control of the crippled ship, but Cross knew the truth.

He knew that they would be too late.