The Suliban.
They're the sneaky bastards who nearly bollocksed-up our maiden trial, taking Klaang back to Qo'noS, and it seems as if they're up to their old tricks again. Well, thanks to the captain having some kind of 'mystical experience' with Daniels – or the person who for his own reasons masqueraded as an ordinary crewman aboard Enterprise – we have our own sneaky tricks up our sleeve, and I'm more than ready for dealing one or two of them into the deck.
I've just finished work in the Armoury when the captain comms me to ask if I've finished plotting all the target points. I'm happy to reply in the affirmative, and he tells me to stand by.
I have a monitor set up to watch what transpires on the Bridge – I can't rely solely on microphone communications in a situation like this. So I see exactly the same as everyone else does, those quantum beacons that the Suliban don't know we have revealing their cruiser tucked up snugly beside its docking station.
"Right where they're supposed to be," says the captain, on a note of savage satisfaction.
"Aren't we in range of their sensors, sir?" Hoshi asks.
Of course we are, but as they have no idea (yet) that we can see through their cloak, they're not going to make any move that would betray their presence. They'll lie doggo, hoping we'll slide past without suspecting they're there – at least, until they have a lot more reason to be alarmed.
The captain orders Travis to hold course. To head directly for the moon where the station's lurking would be a bit of a giveaway, so we're steering as if our proximity is just an unfortunate coincidence.
I've done all the calculations and the firing sequences are all locked in, but I still ask if we can wait till we're just a little closer so I can be absolutely sure of hitting what we want to hit. It's a balancing game between creeping close enough to pounce and risking alarming the prey.
Almost to the second I predicted, the Suliban twig what's happening.
"They're charging weapons," Hoshi announces.
"Now, Mister Reed!"
Hell's bells, there's not much to beat the feeling of watching shot after shot hit the target exactly where you mean them to. The cruiser shudders from stem to stern as multiple phase cannon impacts tear into it.
"Their cloaking generator's down," Fuller reports.
The information's still spooling in. "All four weapon banks, as well," I say with satisfaction.
"Port and starboard engines disabled."
"OK, here's the tricky part." I watch the photon torpedo streak away and smash into the belly of the cruiser.
Shouting 'YESSSSS!' and punching the air would be Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, but there are days when I wish it wasn't.
Today is one of them, but I keep my voice appropriately measured as I notify Captain Archer, now in Shuttlepod Two and en route to the enemy – again with both of his senior command staff and no trained security! – that at least as far as external threats are concerned, the cruiser is a sitting duck.
That doesn't mean that the risk is negligible. According to our extraordinarily knowledgeable Mr Daniels, there should be up to twenty Suliban left in a position to mount a defence.
Not good odds, to my mind, and it sounds as if Trip isn't particularly impressed by them either. Still, I can do no more than watch the sensors that tell me where the boarding party are in relation to where they need to be in order to obtain the proof that it was the Suliban who were responsible for the disaster to the Paraagan colony.
Trip has a concussion grenade, and he uses it almost immediately. Six bio-signs magically appear on my monitor, all very still, and I stifle a chuckle as I envision half a dozen invisible Suliban dropping from the ceiling and walls like flies in a fumigated house. It doesn't escape me that whatever genetic manipulation allows some of them to make themselves invisible also has the capacity to fool our sensors, but I'll make a note of that in my report.
The monitor tracks the away team's progress. We already know where the information is stored; they just need to get there, retrieve it and get out again alive.
"Just ten more metres." I can hear pistol fire and my palms are clammy with sweat. There are Suliban bio-signs homing in on the intruders like ants swarming in on an invader in the nest, and as a running firefight develops, twenty to three is looking longer and longer odds…
The three of them reach the control room. Captain Archer knows where to look.
Bloody hell, there must be more than twenty Suliban now, closing in with reckless determination. I don't know if they're not bothering to hide themselves, or if these lack the ability to do it, but T'Pol's scanner should be showing her the same grim picture I'm getting.
It is. "Captain, they're all around us."
"Archer to Reed."
"Go ahead."
"We need some help here."
I thought you'd never bloody ask! "I see them. You'd better take cover."
I can't risk firing at anything too close to the boarding party, but I've already sized up my options for targets that will produce a satisfactory-sized 'bang' when hit. The phase cannon speaks again and all of a sudden there are significantly fewer moving bio-signs threatening our officers.
They get back to Shuttlepod Two without incident, but not without pursuit; I watch in desperation as several of the remaining Suliban force their way into the airlock. The power signature on the shuttlepod says that Trip's trying to release the docking clamps but the enemy have locked them on, trapping the vessel till they can board it.
There are times when you do what you have to. The captain issues the order to ignite the thrusters and go to full power.
The docking clamps can't win an argument with an impulse engine. The side of the airlock rips off, and the Suliban who'd been trying to hammer a way in suddenly have an unexpected encounter with hard vacuum.
Maybe I'm the only one who watches the bodies floating and thinks that a few of the thirty-six hundred colonists have been avenged…
But whether or not, we've done what we came to do.
Now we have to get back to reveal to Starfleet and the Vulcans exactly what did happen at Paraagan.
And if Daniels is still 'batting a thousand' (and he hasn't missed a pitch so far, if that's the correct term), then we finally have proof that whoever killed those unfortunate colonists, it wasn't us.