- CHAPTER 19 -
- Alliance Space Station Retribution -
Peter O'Tole lounged in the luxurious trappings of his temporary quarters. His personal attendants were circled around him. They were all strikingly beautiful young women of various species, which was only fitting for the most powerful crime boss in three quadrants. O'Tole's attendants were fawning over him, which is what they were paid, and paid well, for. His predecessors had used slaves instead of paid employees. That was how O'Tole had managed to get rid of them, slaves were easily convinced to turn against their masters, especially when they were as cruel and uncaring as the previous Cartel bosses had been. Peter was determined not to succumb to the same downfalls as his predecessors, so he both treated his entourage decently, he paid them handsomely as well. While this didn't ensure allegiance, it did mean that they were considerably less likely to stab him in the back.
The portable com system that followed Peter everywhere beeped for his attention. He changed instantly from a content male to ruthless cartel boss. He snapped his fingers, which was the signal for his attendants to leave the room. They made small sounds of protest, for some of them it was an act, for others it spoke of actual attraction towards him. In the end it didn't matter which because they all had to leave. Only when Peter was alone in the room did he accept the incoming call. The frowning features of Chairman Greg Betare stared back at him.
"It is done, the Council shall do nothing about the rise in attacks by the rebels. I've held up my end of the bargain, now are you going to hold up yours?"
"Greg, Greg, Greg. You must learn to relax. Of course I'll hold up my end of the Bargain."
"Good, because I have just received word that the schedule must be moved up. That damn fool Chriton has gone and jumped the gun, so everything needs to be put in motion immediately!"
"What the hell do you mean jumped the gun! I thought you said that you had him under control!" Peter said testily to the Chairman.
"Hey lay off, I thought I did but I was mistaken. And its not like this is a major deal anyway. Instead of commencing action in two weeks, we go as soon as possible."
"Are you totally ignorant of the realities of orchestrating multiple axis of attack in secret across the better part of two quadrants?! Check that, of course you are or you would know that what you are asking takes time." The image on the screen frowned. Peter sighed. "Don't worry, it will be difficult, but the attacks shall be launched in time and you shall become the savior of the Terran Empire, just like in the plan."
"Just as long as you strike soon. 2nd Fleet shall cease to be a concern shortly. I'm holding up my end, see that you hold up yours!" And with that Greg cut the scrambled, stealthed com signal. A slow, feline smile spread across Peter's face and he began to laugh quietly to himself. The door chime sounded.
"Come" He said, still chuckling softly. Into the room entered the Orion slave girl that was his favorite plaything. Her green skin and raven black hair contrasted with the red hued lighting of the Klingon starbase.
"Master, what is so funny?" She asked innocently as she slunk seductively towards him.
"Nothing Marita, just a pawn with dreams of being a king."
"Begging the Master's pardon, but that doesn't seem very funny to me."
This caused Peter to go from quiet chuckles to side splitting, tear inducing laughter. After a spell, he finally got himself under control again.
"I don't think that it will seem very funny to the pawn when he realizes just what he is either." Peter got a mental picture of Greg's face when he figured it out and burst into a fresh fit of self satisfied laughter, all the while Marita just looked on with a confused expression.
- ISS Hopolite, Main Engineering, that same time -
Chief Engineer Cmdr Clay Heidberg stared out the gaping hole where another 50 feet of starship should be. The emergency forcefields had engaged quickly, but it had been an interesting second or two before they had. For those couple of seconds, main engineering had been hell. Anything not nailed down or incapable of grabbing onto something had been sucked out into the void of space, including at least three crewmembers. It was only through sheer luck that Clay himself had been able to grab the edge of a railing as he was sucked along by it. Just as his grip was about to slip, the forcefields had sprung to life stopping both the suction and the near deafening roar of escaping atmosphere. Everything aft of frame 78 was just gone, ripped away by the astounding power of the new alien's weaponry. At least he and his fellow engineers had managed to get the internal coms back online. He looked toward the Quantum Slipstream core, informally known as the pit to any serving personnel. Its normally arcing globe of blue white plasma remained dark, despite the best efforts of Hopolite's remaining engineers and the teams from 2nd Fleet.
"Ulysses to Heidberg, situation report please." The Captain's voice came over the speakers. Clay tapped his combadge.
"Heidberg here sir. It doesn't look very good Captain. The mains are still offline, and it looks like they'll stay that way till we get to a repair yard. Currently everything is running on backups, but I can't say how long that will last. There is just to much damage to the main systems to allow for an accurate probability assessment. The left nacelle pylon is sheared off, and there is significant hull warping and buckling along the nacelle pylon root. Secondary hull is totally destroyed aft of frame 78. 10 engineering personnel are unaccounted for and presumed lost, along with all the pilots and marines." Their quarters were in the aft secondary hull, which was now either atoms or large splinters. Not even emergency pressure fields of their standard uniforms could protect them from the hideous energies released by the enemy weapon. S&R teams were still combing space with every available sensor, but so far they had found nothing and by this time probably never would.
"So basically what you are saying is that we should shut down everything and get the Hopolite towed back to a yard?"
"That's the long and the short of it sir. I'm sorry but the extent of the damage is just to severe for anything else we do here to be worth the time and effort. Anything we managed to cobble together to get main power and impulse back online would just have to be scrapped by the yard dogs anyway." A sigh came from the com as Ulysses made his decision.
"Alright, have your people send everything into standby or shutdown and prepare for evac to the Athena."
"Understood sir."
"Good, Ulysses out."
"Ok, you heard the Captain, shut it all down, there isn't anything more we can do here. Perhaps the yard dogs can pull off a miracle and get her patched back together."
- ISS Athena, that same time -
One of the most powerful weapons in 2nd Fleet's arsenal shuffled towards one of the mammoth flagships many turbolifts. His dark brown hair was unkempt and his uniform was wrinkled and slightly askew. His department strip was a black band around his black cuff, signifying PSI Branch. Many of the crew either ignored him or worse yet feared him. He couldn't blame them, but it still added to his isolation and distance from those he served with. Being a highly trained Romulan telepath put him on the outside of the mainstream Terran and Vulcan officers and enlisted personnel. It wasn't like he had had a choice in the matter. He had been selected at birth by Section 31 to undergo the considerable training and mind conditioning that enabled him to harness his telepathic powers for use against the enemies of the Empire. Unfortunately, that same conditioning caused things that most normal beings took for granted to be all but totally unknown to him. His interpersonal skills were virtually nonexistent, but it wasn't as if anyone actually wanted him for a friend anyway. His mind was so full of seeded commands and imperatives that he was nearly insane. Add to this already chaotic mixture a virtual inability to tune out the thoughts of others and what you got was a very screwed up individual.
The specially modified Romulans that Section had whipped up for the Empire were among its most closely watched entities. Their sheer power meant that they were constantly under watch for any sign of instability or mental breakdown lest that power be turned against the Empire. As the rewired Romulan entered the lift, other crewmembers that had planned on entering the car waited for the doors to close. Corval rode the car to the bridge alone, yet even there, the constant mental voices of the rest of Athena's crew assaulted his mind. After years of living with them as a constant companion, the emotions and thoughts of others didn't bother him much. Even the extensive anti telepath training that all Starfleet personnel underwent was unable to stop his highly sensitive mind from reading their thoughts and feelings. Unless he concentrated, they came at him in a flood of garbled and crossed signals. But when he concentrated, there was little in the universe that could resist him. Fortunately for the men and women onboard Athena, his programming required that a superior officer order him to do so.
The turbolift car, after a long ride, began to slow and the doors swished open to show the main bridge buried in the bowels of the ship. The room was three stories tall and there was a platform projecting out into the open space in the middle of the room. On it was the command chair of the powerful mountain of alloy and weapons. Multiple stations ringed the bridge deck on three levels, but the middle of the room was dominated by the command chair. Instead of a standard viewer, Starfleet engineers had decided to give the Bastion class an actual hologrid in its place. The battle took shape all around the command chair in full three-dimensional images. This gave the CO both a much more detailed view of the battlefield and a much wider field of view. Corval strode out the second floor balcony towards the flagships throne. Seated there under the overhead light was Fleet Admiral T'var. She turned towards Corval when he approached.
"Y.yyou called aa.Admiral?" He said in his peculiar halting style, yet another side effect of the 'training' Section had forced upon him. The poor soul also looked at the floor or the bulkhead beyond T'var's left shoulder, never raising his eyes to directly meet hers. He was like a caged terrified animal, but instead of physical bars, he was held hostage behind the bars of conditioning and mind control that Section had used on him. It almost caused T'var to wince in sympathy every time she heard and saw him. To do something like what Section 31 had done to this being when he was a mere babe in arms was reprehensible. But she was a Vulcan, even better schooled than most citizens of the Empire in not letting her emotions show, so her inner turmoil remained her own. From the peculiar look that crossed Corval's face, he might have caught the edge of her emotions, so she buried them deeper and started talking to get his mind off of whatever he might have glimpsed. It wouldn't do for him to read her and find out her secret.
"Yes Mr. Corval. I have a feeling that your services will be required soon. Within the hour we shall enter the Borg portal in an attempt to find 24th Fleet. Your special services shall be of great use if we encounter this new enemy before then. Please take a seat."
"Yyyeess sirrr." Corval turned and sat in an observer's seat mounted along the wall, the whole time a perplexed look shadowed his face.
- Fluidic Space, near the Borg portal -
-All was in readiness. The small enemy fleet was coming into range now of the detached units, while the rest of the fleet had moved into a blocking position over its only avenue of escape. Only half of the blocking force would be needed even in a worst case scenario though, so the unneeded portion made plans to reenter the strange system on the other side. They would engage in a recon in force and report back to the fleet after they had thoroughly scanned the system. -
- 24th Fleet, ISS Shiva, that same time -
The Imperial vessels flew through the creepy green biomatter that filled every nook and cranny of this mysterious realm. The whole time Admiral Chriton sat smugly in his chair, supremely confident in his eventual victory.
"Sir, I am detecting sporadic bio signs from directly ahead. Although contact is fleeting, it would appear that there is a rather large number of space born creatures there."
"Excellent, that should be our quarry. According to the reports, they harness living creatures for their starships. Order the fleet to go to battle stations and assume combat formation gamma two."
"Aye aye sir."
The ships began to jockey into position, forming up into their assigned combat wings as the red alert klaxons began to bay. Then, like bolts from heaven, death and destruction rained down on their orderly files. Dozens of bioships swarmed out of the shrouding green biomatter, firing as they came. The capital ships staggered as large portions of their hull ceased to exist.
Onboard the Shiva, the crew lurched as the insanely powerful beams clawed at her well armored outer hull. The ablative armor generators weren't working anywhere near as well as they should have, for armor integrity had already dropped 46%.
"Order all ships to open fire!" Chriton cried out.
Two of the Sovereigns disappeared in boils of white hot light as lucky, or unlucky depending on your side of the engagement, strikes lanced deep into their hull, found their slipstream cores, vaporized them, and continued out the other side of the ship. A wing of Defiants tried to make an attack run on one of the alien vessels, but despite it being nearly three times their size, it was almost more maneuverable than they were. The multiple volleys of pulse phaser cannon shots and quantum torpedoes seemed to be no more than flea bites to it, a mere annoyance causing little to no damage. The bioship lined up each of its pursuers in turn and blew gaping wholes in each of them. The first Defiant was struck just aft of the bridge along its starboard nacelle, with the attack stripping away fully 1/3 of the tough vessel. What survived went spinning out of control and out of the fight. Defiant number two was cleaved neatly in half by a well timed burst from the bioship. Number three was slightly luckier, it dove between the secondary hull and port nacelle of a hard fighting Galaxy. The bioships beam chased after it, first damaging the nacelle pylon of the Galaxy, then shearing away a significant portion of its saucer section as it met with an already weakened section. The battle unfolding was sheer chaos. Both sides were firing their weapons like demons, and the very space itself seemed to take on a glow from their beam weapons.
A lightly damaged Sovereign streaked by, firing from both its dorsal and ventral phaser arrays as it sliced between two bioships. All it served to do was bring their wrath down upon it instead of her squadron mate that they had been concentrating on. Dual beams of death played down her armored spine, eventually finding a weakened area in her armor. Her secondary hull ceased to exist just short of her nacelle pylons. For a moment the Sovereign lurched drunkenly, nacelles and impulse engines fading as main power was momentarily lost, but then kicking back up to nearly full strength as her frantic engineering staff brought the slipstream core back online. Whipping her nose up into a 180 degree turn, the damaged Sovereign turned on her two pursuers, lining up one with her phaser lance. Its angry red beam lanced out towards one of the bioships while her torpedo turret spat blue white orbs of destruction. The lance hit the bioship's hull, and was soon joined by the Sovereign's phaser banks. For a moment, nothing happened, then the living hull began to show glowing molten fissures. A volley of 8 quantums flashed in on the lance's heels, and the bioship broke in half. But by concentrating on one of the bioships, the Sovereign had allowed the other bioship to sneak around to its damaged aft section. The Sovereign broke apart in a brilliant explosion as the bioship's beam found its slipstream core.
- Alliance Space Station Retribution -
Peter O'Tole lounged in the luxurious trappings of his temporary quarters. His personal attendants were circled around him. They were all strikingly beautiful young women of various species, which was only fitting for the most powerful crime boss in three quadrants. O'Tole's attendants were fawning over him, which is what they were paid, and paid well, for. His predecessors had used slaves instead of paid employees. That was how O'Tole had managed to get rid of them, slaves were easily convinced to turn against their masters, especially when they were as cruel and uncaring as the previous Cartel bosses had been. Peter was determined not to succumb to the same downfalls as his predecessors, so he both treated his entourage decently, he paid them handsomely as well. While this didn't ensure allegiance, it did mean that they were considerably less likely to stab him in the back.
The portable com system that followed Peter everywhere beeped for his attention. He changed instantly from a content male to ruthless cartel boss. He snapped his fingers, which was the signal for his attendants to leave the room. They made small sounds of protest, for some of them it was an act, for others it spoke of actual attraction towards him. In the end it didn't matter which because they all had to leave. Only when Peter was alone in the room did he accept the incoming call. The frowning features of Chairman Greg Betare stared back at him.
"It is done, the Council shall do nothing about the rise in attacks by the rebels. I've held up my end of the bargain, now are you going to hold up yours?"
"Greg, Greg, Greg. You must learn to relax. Of course I'll hold up my end of the Bargain."
"Good, because I have just received word that the schedule must be moved up. That damn fool Chriton has gone and jumped the gun, so everything needs to be put in motion immediately!"
"What the hell do you mean jumped the gun! I thought you said that you had him under control!" Peter said testily to the Chairman.
"Hey lay off, I thought I did but I was mistaken. And its not like this is a major deal anyway. Instead of commencing action in two weeks, we go as soon as possible."
"Are you totally ignorant of the realities of orchestrating multiple axis of attack in secret across the better part of two quadrants?! Check that, of course you are or you would know that what you are asking takes time." The image on the screen frowned. Peter sighed. "Don't worry, it will be difficult, but the attacks shall be launched in time and you shall become the savior of the Terran Empire, just like in the plan."
"Just as long as you strike soon. 2nd Fleet shall cease to be a concern shortly. I'm holding up my end, see that you hold up yours!" And with that Greg cut the scrambled, stealthed com signal. A slow, feline smile spread across Peter's face and he began to laugh quietly to himself. The door chime sounded.
"Come" He said, still chuckling softly. Into the room entered the Orion slave girl that was his favorite plaything. Her green skin and raven black hair contrasted with the red hued lighting of the Klingon starbase.
"Master, what is so funny?" She asked innocently as she slunk seductively towards him.
"Nothing Marita, just a pawn with dreams of being a king."
"Begging the Master's pardon, but that doesn't seem very funny to me."
This caused Peter to go from quiet chuckles to side splitting, tear inducing laughter. After a spell, he finally got himself under control again.
"I don't think that it will seem very funny to the pawn when he realizes just what he is either." Peter got a mental picture of Greg's face when he figured it out and burst into a fresh fit of self satisfied laughter, all the while Marita just looked on with a confused expression.
- ISS Hopolite, Main Engineering, that same time -
Chief Engineer Cmdr Clay Heidberg stared out the gaping hole where another 50 feet of starship should be. The emergency forcefields had engaged quickly, but it had been an interesting second or two before they had. For those couple of seconds, main engineering had been hell. Anything not nailed down or incapable of grabbing onto something had been sucked out into the void of space, including at least three crewmembers. It was only through sheer luck that Clay himself had been able to grab the edge of a railing as he was sucked along by it. Just as his grip was about to slip, the forcefields had sprung to life stopping both the suction and the near deafening roar of escaping atmosphere. Everything aft of frame 78 was just gone, ripped away by the astounding power of the new alien's weaponry. At least he and his fellow engineers had managed to get the internal coms back online. He looked toward the Quantum Slipstream core, informally known as the pit to any serving personnel. Its normally arcing globe of blue white plasma remained dark, despite the best efforts of Hopolite's remaining engineers and the teams from 2nd Fleet.
"Ulysses to Heidberg, situation report please." The Captain's voice came over the speakers. Clay tapped his combadge.
"Heidberg here sir. It doesn't look very good Captain. The mains are still offline, and it looks like they'll stay that way till we get to a repair yard. Currently everything is running on backups, but I can't say how long that will last. There is just to much damage to the main systems to allow for an accurate probability assessment. The left nacelle pylon is sheared off, and there is significant hull warping and buckling along the nacelle pylon root. Secondary hull is totally destroyed aft of frame 78. 10 engineering personnel are unaccounted for and presumed lost, along with all the pilots and marines." Their quarters were in the aft secondary hull, which was now either atoms or large splinters. Not even emergency pressure fields of their standard uniforms could protect them from the hideous energies released by the enemy weapon. S&R teams were still combing space with every available sensor, but so far they had found nothing and by this time probably never would.
"So basically what you are saying is that we should shut down everything and get the Hopolite towed back to a yard?"
"That's the long and the short of it sir. I'm sorry but the extent of the damage is just to severe for anything else we do here to be worth the time and effort. Anything we managed to cobble together to get main power and impulse back online would just have to be scrapped by the yard dogs anyway." A sigh came from the com as Ulysses made his decision.
"Alright, have your people send everything into standby or shutdown and prepare for evac to the Athena."
"Understood sir."
"Good, Ulysses out."
"Ok, you heard the Captain, shut it all down, there isn't anything more we can do here. Perhaps the yard dogs can pull off a miracle and get her patched back together."
- ISS Athena, that same time -
One of the most powerful weapons in 2nd Fleet's arsenal shuffled towards one of the mammoth flagships many turbolifts. His dark brown hair was unkempt and his uniform was wrinkled and slightly askew. His department strip was a black band around his black cuff, signifying PSI Branch. Many of the crew either ignored him or worse yet feared him. He couldn't blame them, but it still added to his isolation and distance from those he served with. Being a highly trained Romulan telepath put him on the outside of the mainstream Terran and Vulcan officers and enlisted personnel. It wasn't like he had had a choice in the matter. He had been selected at birth by Section 31 to undergo the considerable training and mind conditioning that enabled him to harness his telepathic powers for use against the enemies of the Empire. Unfortunately, that same conditioning caused things that most normal beings took for granted to be all but totally unknown to him. His interpersonal skills were virtually nonexistent, but it wasn't as if anyone actually wanted him for a friend anyway. His mind was so full of seeded commands and imperatives that he was nearly insane. Add to this already chaotic mixture a virtual inability to tune out the thoughts of others and what you got was a very screwed up individual.
The specially modified Romulans that Section had whipped up for the Empire were among its most closely watched entities. Their sheer power meant that they were constantly under watch for any sign of instability or mental breakdown lest that power be turned against the Empire. As the rewired Romulan entered the lift, other crewmembers that had planned on entering the car waited for the doors to close. Corval rode the car to the bridge alone, yet even there, the constant mental voices of the rest of Athena's crew assaulted his mind. After years of living with them as a constant companion, the emotions and thoughts of others didn't bother him much. Even the extensive anti telepath training that all Starfleet personnel underwent was unable to stop his highly sensitive mind from reading their thoughts and feelings. Unless he concentrated, they came at him in a flood of garbled and crossed signals. But when he concentrated, there was little in the universe that could resist him. Fortunately for the men and women onboard Athena, his programming required that a superior officer order him to do so.
The turbolift car, after a long ride, began to slow and the doors swished open to show the main bridge buried in the bowels of the ship. The room was three stories tall and there was a platform projecting out into the open space in the middle of the room. On it was the command chair of the powerful mountain of alloy and weapons. Multiple stations ringed the bridge deck on three levels, but the middle of the room was dominated by the command chair. Instead of a standard viewer, Starfleet engineers had decided to give the Bastion class an actual hologrid in its place. The battle took shape all around the command chair in full three-dimensional images. This gave the CO both a much more detailed view of the battlefield and a much wider field of view. Corval strode out the second floor balcony towards the flagships throne. Seated there under the overhead light was Fleet Admiral T'var. She turned towards Corval when he approached.
"Y.yyou called aa.Admiral?" He said in his peculiar halting style, yet another side effect of the 'training' Section had forced upon him. The poor soul also looked at the floor or the bulkhead beyond T'var's left shoulder, never raising his eyes to directly meet hers. He was like a caged terrified animal, but instead of physical bars, he was held hostage behind the bars of conditioning and mind control that Section had used on him. It almost caused T'var to wince in sympathy every time she heard and saw him. To do something like what Section 31 had done to this being when he was a mere babe in arms was reprehensible. But she was a Vulcan, even better schooled than most citizens of the Empire in not letting her emotions show, so her inner turmoil remained her own. From the peculiar look that crossed Corval's face, he might have caught the edge of her emotions, so she buried them deeper and started talking to get his mind off of whatever he might have glimpsed. It wouldn't do for him to read her and find out her secret.
"Yes Mr. Corval. I have a feeling that your services will be required soon. Within the hour we shall enter the Borg portal in an attempt to find 24th Fleet. Your special services shall be of great use if we encounter this new enemy before then. Please take a seat."
"Yyyeess sirrr." Corval turned and sat in an observer's seat mounted along the wall, the whole time a perplexed look shadowed his face.
- Fluidic Space, near the Borg portal -
-All was in readiness. The small enemy fleet was coming into range now of the detached units, while the rest of the fleet had moved into a blocking position over its only avenue of escape. Only half of the blocking force would be needed even in a worst case scenario though, so the unneeded portion made plans to reenter the strange system on the other side. They would engage in a recon in force and report back to the fleet after they had thoroughly scanned the system. -
- 24th Fleet, ISS Shiva, that same time -
The Imperial vessels flew through the creepy green biomatter that filled every nook and cranny of this mysterious realm. The whole time Admiral Chriton sat smugly in his chair, supremely confident in his eventual victory.
"Sir, I am detecting sporadic bio signs from directly ahead. Although contact is fleeting, it would appear that there is a rather large number of space born creatures there."
"Excellent, that should be our quarry. According to the reports, they harness living creatures for their starships. Order the fleet to go to battle stations and assume combat formation gamma two."
"Aye aye sir."
The ships began to jockey into position, forming up into their assigned combat wings as the red alert klaxons began to bay. Then, like bolts from heaven, death and destruction rained down on their orderly files. Dozens of bioships swarmed out of the shrouding green biomatter, firing as they came. The capital ships staggered as large portions of their hull ceased to exist.
Onboard the Shiva, the crew lurched as the insanely powerful beams clawed at her well armored outer hull. The ablative armor generators weren't working anywhere near as well as they should have, for armor integrity had already dropped 46%.
"Order all ships to open fire!" Chriton cried out.
Two of the Sovereigns disappeared in boils of white hot light as lucky, or unlucky depending on your side of the engagement, strikes lanced deep into their hull, found their slipstream cores, vaporized them, and continued out the other side of the ship. A wing of Defiants tried to make an attack run on one of the alien vessels, but despite it being nearly three times their size, it was almost more maneuverable than they were. The multiple volleys of pulse phaser cannon shots and quantum torpedoes seemed to be no more than flea bites to it, a mere annoyance causing little to no damage. The bioship lined up each of its pursuers in turn and blew gaping wholes in each of them. The first Defiant was struck just aft of the bridge along its starboard nacelle, with the attack stripping away fully 1/3 of the tough vessel. What survived went spinning out of control and out of the fight. Defiant number two was cleaved neatly in half by a well timed burst from the bioship. Number three was slightly luckier, it dove between the secondary hull and port nacelle of a hard fighting Galaxy. The bioships beam chased after it, first damaging the nacelle pylon of the Galaxy, then shearing away a significant portion of its saucer section as it met with an already weakened section. The battle unfolding was sheer chaos. Both sides were firing their weapons like demons, and the very space itself seemed to take on a glow from their beam weapons.
A lightly damaged Sovereign streaked by, firing from both its dorsal and ventral phaser arrays as it sliced between two bioships. All it served to do was bring their wrath down upon it instead of her squadron mate that they had been concentrating on. Dual beams of death played down her armored spine, eventually finding a weakened area in her armor. Her secondary hull ceased to exist just short of her nacelle pylons. For a moment the Sovereign lurched drunkenly, nacelles and impulse engines fading as main power was momentarily lost, but then kicking back up to nearly full strength as her frantic engineering staff brought the slipstream core back online. Whipping her nose up into a 180 degree turn, the damaged Sovereign turned on her two pursuers, lining up one with her phaser lance. Its angry red beam lanced out towards one of the bioships while her torpedo turret spat blue white orbs of destruction. The lance hit the bioship's hull, and was soon joined by the Sovereign's phaser banks. For a moment, nothing happened, then the living hull began to show glowing molten fissures. A volley of 8 quantums flashed in on the lance's heels, and the bioship broke in half. But by concentrating on one of the bioships, the Sovereign had allowed the other bioship to sneak around to its damaged aft section. The Sovereign broke apart in a brilliant explosion as the bioship's beam found its slipstream core.