The Surocco Enclave

by Tengou

Episode 1, Revisioned and Finished. Please R&R

PILOT: EPISODE 1: Brittle Foundations, Part I

Romulus, September 20, 2386 A.D. Time: 02.22 hours

The night stars shone into the Romulan sky, casting a strange twinkling distortion of light onto the rippling surf of the ocean. Waves of water cluttered against the rounded outer wall of the vast consulate, walls once meant to keep the renegades from entering a vault of riches. Though still, the night shone yet poorly upon this epitome of Romulan might, for the stars, radiant as they might seem, slightly brightened by the minute lens effect of the Romulan atmosphere, were less bright as they used to. This was caused by the half silhouette of Remus, sticking out over the horizon as an approaching, lumbering behemoth and the halo of twinkling lights on the dark side, outlining the Dilithium facilities, were also quite visible, intermixing with the blanket of stars that wheeled overhead. For the slight humming of several anti-gravity propulsors in the close sky, the entire senate was completely covered in silence, the boots of the Elitist guards patrolling the inners of the consulate were like crickets, a numbing, calming sound of complete control, one in which one would not find it hard to simply sleep away.

No more than a few minutes went by, as one of the engines could be heard coming closer, a luxurious shuttle-sized craft setting down in the massive atrium, landing struts expanding and clunking against the ground. The weight of the ship caused it to slightly sink over the struts, until the suspension accounted for all downward force. Almost immediately as the vessel stopped all movement, the engines could be heard powering down and the back suddenly seemed to detach. Like the back of a lorry, the slaw came down to land onto the marble padding of the atrium and within a slight moment, three pairs of boots traveled over the lightly sloping walkway onto the solid ground of the consulate. Their garments were of the most exquisite Telerian silks, a common trait amongst consuls and senators. They appeared to be figures of high stature, walking right towards the main entrance that led towards the inners of the senate in all silence. Not one word was uttered between the three and it appeared as if no one tried to break the ice. They were two men and one woman, the woman walking in the middle and appearing to be of age. They all had the typical Romulan haircut of slaking, straight hair, listing the face in an M shape. The silence was not broken once, the three disappearing into the black of the entrance.

2.22 hours

As of a sudden, the stars that twinkled lightly in the sky, the many boots that played the ground in a minute, ongoing rumble, were all overthrown by a massive flash of light. First, this flash traveled in a sloping angle through the entrance, lighting it up as if it was a magnesium flare. From inside the building, a powerful ripple started to emanate through the welds of metal and the joints of sediment blocks. A force of nature unchained, working its way out of every possible crevice, opportunistically creeping into every micro-fracture in range and expanding it to a full tare. The wall of the structure seemed to bulge outwards, the less ductile sediment conducting the force through to the ground, rippling the metal hull into a distraught, twisted heap, out bent like a balloon exploding. The shockwave was very powerful, pressing its way through to the atrium within the next hundredth of a second and even before the guards would experience the sound of the heaven-shattering explosion, their bodies would be powerfully slung back. Pieces of highly corroded, fatigued metal shreds, blocks of marble and other sediment and bodies of guards close to the perimeter littered the sky until coming down upon the consulate ground like a rain of terror and death. Whoever was far enough away from the explosion in order to escape harm would find himself the recipient of a hailstorm of death. Whatever pieces were not already on their way down, were fired as bullets in a 120 degree spread, the outward reach of the explosion. Within the 15 seconds it took for the last compromised bulkhead of the construction to fall to a pile of rubble, the first unharmed security guards came speeding towards the sight. An event nothing short of catastrophic caused the immediate activation of additional security parameters and spurred an entire civilization into a state of high alert.

USS Basileia, September 23, 2386. Time: 17.50

The silhouette of a fair spaceship glided through the dark depths of space. A light grey tint to its hull, making it seem solid, yet sleek. Orbiting the world fo Ganesia, close to the border of UFP space, to receive yet a new ally in the struggle to create a stable, democratic Federation. The world was lush with plantlife to spare, The Ganesians, a people of great eloquence that had successfully arranged a warp flight for the first time, have requested a Federation envoy to allow the treaty to be signed, first contact to be made. The entire ship seemed to be riling with pressure and anticipation.

Captains personal log, September 23, 2386. It's been two days since we arrived at the forestall world of Ganesia. The Ganesians sure are very friendly, but when it comes to punctuality, they have much to learn. They are already 41 hours overdue and I have no reason to believe they are finally ready to approach us. The Ganesians are quite territorial and have explicitly told us to stay off the surface. They truly think everything over ten times before taking action. It is quite ironic that at my first first contact with an alien species, I almost burn my engines out to make it in time and then find that they let me wait. After almost 14 months of steadfast duty, I begin to yearn for some shore-leave as well. I was looking forward to a little safari whether to refamiliarize myself with the meaning of vacation or to reacquaint myself with my past… Computer, pause.

A bleeping sound emanated from the computer inlet on the ceiling of Jan Hunter's readyroom, at the same time the sound that came from the door was succeeded by the door from the bridge sliding open. She looked up from her terminal and cocked her head slightly, to the left side. "Gideon. What's the matter?"

The man that stepped in was quite large, about 6 feet and 4 inches, shorthaired with a scar next to his left eye. A battlescar he wished to leave as it was. A 5 minute treatment from the doctor was all that was necessary to remove it, but he had a very outspoken pride about his time of service as an interstellar commando. In fact, Captain Hunter had been a commando herself and after about 15 years and countless hours of field experience, she discharged herself from her occupation because of a severe disagreement between her and her commander in charge, about the value of a life. Her entire team was taken apart, and many of them had followed her as she traveled the 10 year way towards Captain of a vessel one would not expect a combat veteran to ever captain. It was her experience in the field that had given her a profound tactical view of situations and her open mind that allowed her to work well with the science officers and other crewmembers of a starship. She also completed various studies in the field of Astrophysics and several other sciences. Via a long detour, she finally landed into the captain's chair of an Akira class patrol vessel, then ascending towards the USS Basileia 6 months ago, the first of its class in the fleet.

"Good evening, Jan. I came to tell you that we… finally received word from the main Ganesian Emirate. They agreed to take a vessel to meet with us."

"Outstanding… Finally, too. Make arrangements to have them beamed….."

Captain Hunter was suddenly interrupted as Gidean Spunktry, her most trusted brother in arms and now her Number One, continued his say with a short shake of his head.

"These Ganesians have an aversion to technology they don't understand. We already discussed transporters and they didn't like the prospect of their molecules deconstructed and pulled through the hull of two ships."

Jan's muscular, medium height figure suddenly rose, her hands holding on to the table in front of her. "Oh God damnit." She pinched herself. "Keep up the charade… Keep it up." She shook her head briefly, clearly agitated about these Genosians' mentality.

"All right. Does their ship fit into our cargo hold?" she asked.

"Negative, Captain." Gidean answered, and then Jan suddenly turned around to look out the window. "For the love of good. Then we can praise ourselves lucky that the Basileia is still equipped with a docking birth for exactly these situations. Okay. Open the births up, hand them the docking procedure and open a channel. I'll be there in a few moments."

First Commander Spunktry nodded and turned around, walking out the door straight. Jan turned towards the console on her desk, pushed a couple of buttons to secure it in her desk. She breathed in deeply, a Vulcan technique her Tactical Officer Sybok taught her. Then, she exhaled very slowly, focusing on her bodily meridians. She nervously fiddled her comm-badge and stood up, walking out of her readyroom and entering a quite large bridge, with on it ten people manning all stations. She nodded to Sybok, who was at the tactical consoles, standing by without uttering any word. She spoke to him first.. "Status?"

"All in the green, Captain. The Ganesian vessel is approaching steadily. Our shields and weapons are powered down, according to diplomatic and first contact regulations."

Jan looked to the side and then sat down in the Captain's chair, looking out over the large view screen, giving a good image of the green planet below. "Open the channel, Mr Gosa."

The Kerelian responded with a nod and tapped several buttons to regulate the signal, home in on a frequency and establish a two way link. "Channel open, Ma'am. Audio only. They do not like to be seen through the eyes of technology."

Jan nodded and as she finally sat still after shifting her weight a countless times, she stood up again to attend the communication. Though it was only audio, she didn't like the captain's chair one bit. It was uncomfy. With a raspy voice, slightly low, but quite calming, she commenced the greeting. "This is Captain Jan Hunter of the Federation starship Basileia. We have been appointed the honor to partake in this first contact."

The audio feed suddenly responded. "We are the Ganesian flagship Aga Kan. The honor is ours. We request permission to come aboard."

"Permission granted." She spoke calmly. "Our left docking birth is ready to receive your vessel."

"Thank you, Captain. We … are on our way." The channel was closed all of a sudden, the ship, which was roughly 40 meters in length, came about the Basileia's bow. A docking birth extended from the craft, the adaptive enclosure of the Basileia's birth modified itself to fit around the Ganesian dock, creating a pressurized environment. The ship's engines powered down and allowed itself to be dragged along in the calm orbit of the large starship. As the doors opened, and the three emissaries, well dressed in black robes, almost like alien priests, stepped onto the Basileia's gravity plating, they were greeted by seven people. Of course there was the Captain, standing in the middle, Next to her were standing her Number One Mr Spunktry and her tactical officer Sybok. Chief Diplomatic Liaison Ora Stanford, the Betazoid ships counselor Nadya Hinai, Tantheir, the Klingon science officer and also the Chief Medical Officer, the Denobulan Dinox was standing by in case of an unforeseen environmental problem. Chief Engineer Dick Hardy was scheduled to participate in the first contact, but he called off due to a rather aggressive case of gastrointestinal distress. No matter how good internal sensors are, some contagions are hard to detect and no race responds to them in a similar fashion. Apparently, the Ganesians were immune, but poor Dick had a recessive gene in his 22nd chromosome that made his bowels vulnerable to the effects. The captain stepped forward and made herself known.

"Welcome aboard the USS Basileia, emissaries. I am Captain Jan Hunter, your hostess for today. We are honored to be the first to meet your species. We have arranged for Ganesian spice and beverages to be served in the cultural center as a token of our hospitality. Please follow me."

The captain started her stride through a door, that lead to a wide, well lit corridor. Going left instantly and followed by the six members of her crew and the three emissaries, they traveled towards a rounded door: the center turbolift. When it slided open, they all stepped inside. The turbolift had plenty of room to fit the ten people inside and allow adequate mobility. However, when the door opened on deck 10, the three Ganesians were rather impressed at what they saw. In the center of the saucer section, 5 decks high, there was a large cultural center with a fountain in the middle, a pool of water shaped like a ring around the turbolift, intersected by a walking path to allow access. It consisted of multiple trading posts covered by non-military personnel, a quite sizeable recreation facility and several bars. Through the turbolift, they entered the ground floor, looking out towards a high ceiling. Without much speech other than the questions of the Ganesians and the answers of the officers, they made their way towards the restaurant on the ground level of the cultural center, where they had prepared a banquet in the order of the Ganesians.

USS Basileia, Cultural Center, September 23, 18:28

"How are you doing, Karg?" Jan smiled, slightly, towards the large Lurian Chef Cook Karg Hanash, He was a master of the gastronomic art. A master with the capital M.

"Oy, Captain. I can say I worked mi bot off today. These Ganesian spices are a bloody disaster for mi pots. Hard to prepare, too."

"I'll bet", she offers him a slight smile and tapped him on his large shoulder. He was corpulent and jolly. The seven highest ranking officers on the ship then sat down at a specially prepared table, three seats of honor reserved for the three special guests. A few minutes later, the most exquisite foods were piled onto the table in beautiful silverware. "Surrasean Grooper lined with leola and pineapple, The loin of an Earth deer with a powerful snuff of Kal'tegg spice and a delicious, crispy marmelade. Then there's the pungent scent of the Papparillea cheese, and a nice, ample dressing of Andorian Kander and Tellarite rubywine. And here…" Karg suddenly stopped to move towards the center of the table and point out something that looked rather disturbing. "A batch of Ganesian rudderleaves, prepared with marefruit and garnished in an exquisitely refined tawan-powder."

The room filled with a calm music and several crewmembers on leave were also sitting in the restaurant in which payment was filed in replicator rations. It was a very special interior, not at all Starfleet-like, but rather finished with a touch of woodwork, warmer yellowish light instead of the stoking blue and white of the corridors and most importantly, especially for the atmosphere, a fireplace. Of course the Basileia has no chimney, but the smoke is radiometricly absorbed and deconstructed back into Carbon, water and air by a matter-energy resequencer.

"You have a very impressive vessel, Captain," one of the emissaries, who mostly kept to the other two members of her species, suddenly uttered in loud. They seemed to finally have conquered their reclusive nature. Jan looked at her with a neutral look for a moment and then nodded.

"Thank you, your eminence. I am quite fond of her."

"Her?" the Ganesian woman asked with a slight wonder in her voice. "Do humans refer to their starships as being female?"

Finally, she thought, and probably the other seven thought the same thing. A discussion in which they all could participate.

"I never really think about it, to be honest," she replied. "But indeed. It is a habit of some humans to refer to their ships as being female, pretty much since the time that they were still sailing the sees instead of the stars.

"Heh, I remember a story my father once told me," the eating Ora Stanford suddenly said, after which she hastily cleared her throat. "He said, that one of my families ancestors was a sailormen aboard the 18th century three master HMS Enterprise. I never believed the name Stanford went back down the annals of time so far, but I checked it and it appeared to be true. He was a first gunner. I am a diplomat." she grinned, clearly amused by her own story.

"Back then, a loaded cannon was the best diplomat you could imagine. It seems that the family line kept to its roots pretty well, the diplomat only changed shape" Spunktry humorously uttered. A dosage of laughter entered the restaurant's interior. Jan stepped into the conversation.

"Yeah, from a cannon ball to a quantum torpedo, level 5."

Some more laughter, until the voice of Commander Sybok was heard. The gravity his words brought to the table was almost enough to make it sink through the ground.

"Captain, I would think it is agreeable to point out to you that we are trying to establish a positive relationship to an alien species we have not met before. I advise against descending the conversation to include weaponry."

They all looked his way for a moment. Captain Hunter seemed to agree, fiddling her hands together for a moment, until the Ganesian High Emissary butted in.

"We do not take offense, I assure you, Commander. We take equal pride in a history of fighting for our countries. Topics of conversation will not be of any insult. We are a very patient, well versed people.

"So we've noticed," Captain Jan Hunter uttered. She wanted to add 'at least about your patience', but refrained from it at the last second. Her history as a commando has left her rather quick to strike, but she did not want to escalate the situation. The other two Ganesians, though clearly of high stature, did not say a word.

The entire meeting was filled with an unseen tension. The people only dared to speak to the leading Ganesian Emissary, because she was the only one that spoke back. The conversation continued, however, maybe to cover the tension or to let it break a little. While the eating ensued, plenty of topics were highlighted for short periods of time, the conversation being one that pivoted mainly around a dialogue between the Emissary and the Captain, where remarks and additions were made by Jan's staff members now and then. The first contact went rather well and the tension started to dissolve slowly into nothingness, the atmosphere winning it from the doubt. Also, with several alcohol containing beverages on the table, several members of the crew were starting to feel the effects of the alcohol. No matter. Most of them were officially off duty for this occasion. Even Starfleet captains need a beer now and then.

"How is Lieutenant Commander Hardy doing?" Sybok amazed the rest of the staff by some more invoking words. Spunktry looked sideways, between a piece of deer stake and a future drink of ale. He had the glass already in hand.

"He is still having… problems with his gut. He got an injection from the doc, but it isn't coming on really well. I guess he'll just have to clean his pathways the natural way."

"Thank you, for this colorful description," Sybok added with a raised eyebrow.

The Captain was about to react to Sybok's words, but then suddenly, her commbadge relayed a message. "Gosa to Captain Hunter."

"Excuse me, your Eminence," she spoke to the Ganesian female and then walked away from the table, standing close to the fireplace "Yes, Galarn. Go ahead."

"Admiral Niles just called in, Ma'am. He is asking for you."

"Put him through to my readyroom. Tell him I'll be there in a few minutes."

"Yes, Captain."

USS Basileia, Captain's Ready Room, September 23, 20.11

The door to the readyroom suddenly slides open with a slight sound of compressing air. Then, her static figure enters and she takes place on her seat, pushing a button on a wall mounted replicator. "Orange juice." A bleep was heard as a glass, filled with orange juice materialized on the matter-energy converter pad. She grabbed it, drunk for a second, then tapped a console panel on her desk to let the screen of her terminal come out and flash the Federation logo to her. It then suddenly changed, the caption Live Feed, Niles, Robert, Station Alpha 1 Comm Key: 676ABB28F2C-61 appeared below the screen and the image of an elderly man with dark eyes and bald head come forth. "Hello, Captain," he uttered calmly.

Good evening, sir. How are you doing?" she asked and tilted her head to the side for a moment, setting the glass down on the table.

"My sleep isn't what it used to be. You?"

"The same, sir. Being a captain never becomes routine for me. I still have dreams." Her eyes look right at the screen

"I can understand. I did my time on the field."

"I know, you were my superior's superior. You called me before you that one day. I never forgot that. You have saved me, in a way."

A silence fell in the room. She was not prepared to start a conversation about her past. She was not prepared for the future either, or else her dreams would have been a whole lot better. She added. "Please sir. Can we get to the point? I have three Ganesians of high stature dining with members of my crew. I really should be there, as Captain of this vessel, to ensure that this first contact goes accordingly."

"Very well." The admiral sighed, but it seemed to have nothing to do with what she said. His facial expression changed to a slightly mysterious gaze. "Jan, I have new orders for you." He said this with great clarity.

"But we're in the middle of a first…"

"I know," he interrupted her. "…but it is necessary. You are to go to Romulus."

This came as quite a shock to Jan, who was about to grab her glass of orange juice, but suddenly stiffened for a while.

"Romulus? Why?"

"That's the strangest part. The Romulans asked… requested that your ship comes to Romulus as soon as possible," he answered. "We haven't been able to determine exactly what they want. I know it sounds suspicious, but I assure you we will keep a close eye on your position and your situation. You are to go as soon as you can."

The Captain used quite some time to let this all sink in. She grabbed for her orange juice and put it to her mouth, letting a good amount of the cold liquid in to tingle her esophagus.

"With all due respect, Admiral, but why us? We are over one hundred lightyears away from Romulus. Surely you can find ships that are closer to the Neutral Zone that the Basileia?"

The Admiral did not move any muscle on his face. "Good question. The Romulans have been extremely secretive of their objectives. They explicitly noted the USS Basileia when they asked for a Federation Envoy."

"What in the world do the Romulans want with us?"

She folded her arms and the Admiral tilted his head right. "I don't know, Jan, but the order stands. You will go to Romulus."

"Yes, Admiral. We are on our way," she said, though be it hesitantly.

"Nigel, out." The screen turned back to the Federation Logo, again, leaving the Captain with wonders and doubts that have gone unanswered, but also with a renewed determination. The heart of the 43 year veteran started to pump with adrenaline, pushing away the mild shroud of alcohol from her mind. There was work at hand.

USS Basileia, Cultural Center, September 23, 20.29

The florid conversation was still going on when the Captain returned to the table in the cultural center of the Basileia. She had been gone slightly over twenty minutes and suddenly butted into the conversation. "Commander Spunktry, we have a problem."

Gidean Spunktry suddenly looked over his shoulder and raised his eyebrow.

"I'm sure it is," he slightly laughed. "Everytime you call me 'Commander Spunktry', we have a big-ass problem."

"I don't know what to make of it yet, … Commander," she cynically replied, but then resumed her normal tone of voice, "…but I received word from Admiral Niles that we are to proceed towards Romulus."

"I'll be damned," he added. "Romulus? Us? Can't he find anyone closer to the Neutral Zone?"

A slight laugh was heard from Jan Hunter. She pulled Mr Spunktry off his chair with quite a lot of force. When they were out of hearing distance, she continued.

"Yes, us. The admiral was very explicit about it. He wanted the USS Basil to proceed towards Romulus. On request of a Romulan Senator."

"Why?"

"I don't know yet, Commander. But I intend to find out. Now, I feel a bit awkward having to do this in the middle of my first first contact, but I ask you, and take as many people you need to pull it off…" she stopped in her tracks and thought of euphemistic words to say this. "… but try and fling them off in a decent manner. Tell them … that we have a problem with our reactor core, or something, and that a substance is released that their immune systems are vulnerable to. We need to go at once. I head the tone in the admiral's voice. He is in distress. He was very serious."

Spunktry thought hard and looked about to the captain, the 5 crewmates and the three emissaries from Ganesia sat where they were. He nodded and as he did, the captain left towards the bridge. "Commanders Tantheir and Stanford. Finish your meals. I need you on the bridge"

Tantheir, the Klingon woman, turned towards Jan and raised her eyebrow. "Captain. I didn't eat this morning to save space for this occasion. I need to eat some more."

She raised her eyebrow and upped her hand, giving her a gesture. "All right, Tantheir. Twenty minutes, then I want you on the bridge." With that, she walked towards the turbolift and set a course for the Basileia bridge.

USS Basileia, Bridge, September 23, 21.50

A rather uncomfortable silence filled the bridge of the USS Basileia. The captain stood in front of the captain's chair, as usual, looking out over the stars that filled the viewscreen. The planet of Ganesia was out of sight already, as they had broken orbit. They did insist, for a reason unknown to Captain Hunter, that they did not go to warp closer than a hundred million kilometers from their world. It might be because they broke the warp threshold only recently and believe that high warp is influential to their planet's climate. Jan Hunter wasn't one to disobey someone while traveling through their space. It did take about 20 minutes to get this far. Ensign Nathan Cole, a rather little man working the sensor consoles, suddenly reared up his head towards the Captain.

"The desired threshold of one hundred million kilometers has been reached, Captain."

"Finally. Set a course for Romulus. Maximum warp."

"Romulus?" the ensign suddenly asked.

"Not this again," the Captain complained. "Engage."

"Aye aye, Ma'am," Iris Cole, the helmsman, responded.

Very quickly, the Basileia turned. It was a beautiful sight, the ship was sleek and glided through space like a razor. Then, suddenly it bursted of, a slightly bluish glare of particles was left in its wake as it shot towards the spatial horizon, disappearing with a slight twinkle of light. At Warp 9,6, it traveled in a narrow vector towards Romulus.

"Distance?" the captain asked.

"106.3 lightyears, Captain, At sustained warp 9.6, we will be there at 19 days and 5 hours."

Jan Hunter only halfly listened. She was pondering, her boots clacking against the bridge floor as she walked back and forth. Truly buried in thought. Why was it that she of all people was asked to take her ship towards Romulus. Her mind attempted to thoroughly consider all possible reasons for the Romulans to ask her. She couldn't think of any. Maybe it was the ale, maybe it was the fact that she was tired, not having slept for over 40 hours. She woke up as soon as the Basileia entered orbit around Ganesia. A yawn escaped her and she looked towards the side. Commander Spunktry suddenly walked up behind Captain Hunter.

"Jan, you really need to rest. It's been long and now we have over two weeks of time."

She looked back towards him and lets out a slight sigh, her head rearing to catch a glimpse of spacedust elongated to stripes of white because of the Warp travel. She didn't know it anymore, thus casting her glance over the bridge crew, letting them fall on Nadya Hinai, the counselor. She sat back as she was looked at, and tilted her head. Her Betazoid mind was already probing Jan's, noticing her wonder.

"You are in doubt…" she uttered, wonderingly.

"You've got that right."

A heavy silence filed the room, cut into pieces by the beeps from the consoles now and then. Jan turned around and looked over her shoulder.

"My readyroom. Immediately." She turned back and walked through the door, which made way for her as she moved through. The counselor followed her calmly.

The readyroom was well lit, but still held a medium luminescence all over. The furniture had a halfly dark, metallic look. She took a seat behind her desk and looked at the glass of orange juice. A third of the drink still remained. She shook her head and grabbed the glass, threw the juice into her mouth and puts the glass back on the replicator trey on which it was resequenced.

"I don't understand something. I was hoping your insight might be helpful," Jan calmly uttered. She looked to the side and gestured her hand towards another seat. On that gesture, Nadya went to sit down immediately, a hand playing through her sleek, red hair as she did.

"Why we are recalled to Romulus in the middle of a first contact…" the counselor answered in an almost monotone way, for a moment probing Jan's emotions with her empathic Betazoid mind.

"Yes, that's one way to put it." Jan answered, looking straight ahead in a tunnel vision way. "Most specificly, why us in the first place? There are starships on less than 20 lightyears from Romulus. Why would they call over a starship that's over hundred lightyears away?"

The betazoid shrugged slightly, but then suddenly looked back up towards the Captain. She raised her eyebrow in a confirmative manner.

"Well, we do have a Romulan representative aboard, as one of only four Federation ships. I don't know where the other four are, but the chance is that we are very well the closest to Romulus."

The captain clearly hadn't thought of that, and she immediately stood up again and walked out, only stopping in the middle of the bridge. The counselor is left puzzled.

"Commander Spunktry," she uttered, "You have the bridge. I need sleep. As you said, we have over two weeks of time."

"Aye, Ma'am."

With that, she left the bridge and disappeared into the turbolift, moving one deck down towards her quarters. Entering them, the only thing she did was undoing her uniform. Then, she set her timer for 6.00 hours in the morning and fell on top of her bed headfirst, out like a light.

USS Basileia, Engineering, September 24, 4.14 hours

The circular two deck chamber in which the warp core was positioned, the night was young, in many different ways. Thirteen people were there, ensigns and crewmen, monitoring the core's exact performance. It wasn't long, maybe a few minutes, before a fourteenth came in. It was Chief Engineer Dick Hardy, a rather enigmatic person with an excentric mind. A man, his subordinates loved to mess with. His name, Dick Hardy, has on many times served him to a batch of unwanted nicknames, like Hardy Dick. Later, a rather enlightened individual changed this to Boner or Hard-on. Commander Hardy was, however, a rather touchy person, prone to anger, which sprouted yet another saying that every time it was uttered, it sprung laughter among the engineering crew. When the Dick becomes a Boner, you must have been really really friendly. Meaning, if you call him Boner, you better be his friend or he'll take you apart faster than you can say 'Magnetic Constriction Coil'. The rest of the crew called him Hardy, to avoid the immediate laughter followed by 'Dick'.

Dick was a tall man as well, an engineer in the blood. He had schematics up his head and a remodulator up his ass, or so people say. About 6 feet 3 and quite broad shoulders, he was a tough guy, with a thick skin. Possessive of what he called 'his warpcore', which was one of the fastest in the fleet to be sure, he displayed his affinity for technology everytime he handled 'her'. Not only taking the greatest care when operating what he thought to be the living, beatig heart of a warp ship, he sometimes was alone in Engineering, talking to the thing. Maybe that was the way he coped with not having wife and children, some thought. The reason however was much more simple and much more obsessive. He had an almost compulsive love for technology. With quick strides, he approached his warp core and tapped a lieutenant on his shoulder. "You're releaved. I'm taking over now."

The man was strangely surprised, remembering Hardy running for the loo several times because of gastrointestinal distress.

"Very well, Commander Hardy," he said while packing his tools and putting his uniform right. He then tilted his head to the side and looked at him.

"I remember from yesterday, you had quite the guttural predicament."

"Well, what can I say, lieutenant, there's more than a little viral agent necessary to keep me away from my warp core."

"I figure," Lieutenant Norman said and then turned around, walking out the door to the room for an early night – or morning – in. More than once could he count on the compulsive, almost obsessive behaviour of his Chief Engineer for an extra hour of free time, sometimes more.

Almost the same moment Hardy stood in front of the warp core, his hand tucked in his side, his legs slightly spread, a strange sound of air pressing out was heard. A fart whirled through the closed space of the engineering, mesmerizing several of the lieutenants and ensigns currently at work.

"Holy shit", one of them complained while waving his hand in front of his nose.

"It sounds and smells as if you're not totally well yet, Hardy." Laughter filled the room for a moment, as then the faces turned back to their respective consoles, monitoring particle density, the reverberation of the warpfield and most importantly, the magnetic constriction of the ultra hot plasma that flew through the core.

"Sorry about that. I'll try to hold it in. The mind precedes the body once more."

More laughter, more people waving their hands around, more theatrically than for the reason of relieving bad smell in the air. One of the Ensigns suddenly turned towards Hardy.

"Sir. We have had problems with the magnetic constriction for the last week now."

"What do you mean Trave? I though that problem would be fixed by now."

The ensign shook his head and looked back at the large warp core. A soft vibration was emitted by it, a slight byproduct of traveling at maximum warp.

"No sir, we tried, but every time we were close to pinpointing the exact cause, it seemed as if it shifted somewhere else. Maybe it's my lack of sleep. Maybe there are gremlins in the warpcore."

"Gremlins. They aren't particularly the engineer's best friend. How long have you been here Ensign?" Hardy asked the young man.

"About fourteen hours, bu…"

"Well, that seems like the right time to get shuteye for me. Nobody asked you to overdo your shift by an additional six hours. I expect you back at noon tomorrow."

The Ensign sighed loudly. He was a Bolian and Bolians seem need at least 8.5 hours of sleep.

"Ok, dickhead. 14.00 hours to 22.00 hours, but for each minute later, you're going to work an additional 30, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir, thank you sir." He hastily walked out of Engineering, Hardy turned towards another person.

"Lieutenant-Commander Yate."

"Yes, sir?" he tidily responded, while not taking his hands and his eyes off the plasma intermix controls. He was reconfiguring, them.

"How are you doing?"

"Fine, sir. The germs finally decided to show you mercy, huh? Well, they surely didn't grant us the same respite," he joked, once more theatrically waving his hand in front of his nose. "You missed the dinner with the Ganesians, Hardy."

"Well, too bad. At least I still have her." He pointed to the warp core, that was standing firmly in the middle of the circular, two decks high chamber of main engineering.

"Harry," he uttered towards LCDR Yate, "I like you to take two teams and inspect the nacelles and the warp coils. I want to make work of it now. This particle imbalance is unacceptable for me. A warp core of this technological stature should be on 100 whenever it is needed. I mean, look at it damnit," he uttered, clearly not satisfied by the meager accomplishment of nigh maximum power.

"We should be able to kick her to Warp 9,6 at 100 power. Yet, it keeps dangling at Warp 9,56. You know that the differentce between Warp 9.56 and Warp 9.6 is 12 and a half hours on this distance?"

Harry Yate gets a bead of sweat on his forehead.

"Come on Hardy, I have done everything I could as far as now. I will take two teams to inspect if the nacelles need realignment, but I can't guarantee anything. We can't push the core in overdrive to meet the captains demands for such long a time. Plus, she said maximum warp. On this moment that's Warp factor 9.56. I'm sorry, Dick."

A loud grunt escaped the Chief Engineer's lips. He was clearly unhappy. He suddenly turned towards Yate.

"Do what you can. I'll be here. Take Raines, Yehman and Hatcher. You have 100 minutes. I need you back here in 6.00 hours."

With a nod, the Lieutenant-Commander took his three men and left for the nacelle maintenance chambers.

"Great, let's climb some Jeffries' Tubes," one of them uttered, then disappeared through the door.

USS Basileia, the Exercise chamber, September 24, 10.02 hours

A wild collection of moans and puffs filled the room, as weights dangled up and down on the exercise machines. There were about eight people inside, most of which were slightly muscleheads, the captain included. Captain Jan Hunter was manning the bench press, working up and down quite an impressive weight, guided and doubled by her closest friend and Number One Gidean Spunktry, Garry Weatherby and Ben Olsen, two members of Hazard Team Alpha and veteran commandos in Jen Hunters combat group, were also there. There were three others that belonged to Jen's group on board, but they worked generally different shifts. These six people were the closest to the captain, due to their former relations. Gidean suddenly disrupted the silence with his beaming voice.

"And, Jen, already figured out why they sent us?"

"I think I have a pretty good idea." She looked up at him for a moment, still working hard to press the weight back up. Despite the strain her muscular form was under and her shape in general, it was visible that she was still quite attractive for a Fortier.

"Well?" Spunktry asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Sela," she said very briefly, as if it was an outburst of some kind. She went on with pushing the weight back and forth on top of her.

"That's the Romulan representative on board right? What does the ambassador have to do with this thing?"

"Simple, Gidean. She's Romulan. Weird that I have looked this over the first time I thought about it." She suddenly lost her grip on the 75 kilogram weight, trying to keep it up, but then was supported by the strong arms of her comrade moving down to catch the weight, refraining it from falling in between her chest and her neck.

"Thank… you," she puffed, then looked back up at him, standing up and making place for him. Gidean added an additional 10 kilograms on each side and went to lie down, She helped him to lift it from the bearing after which he started to do repeats.

"Sela is one out of four Romulan 'ambassadors', more like representatives of the Romulan Star Empire, that have been assigned to four different Federation starships. It is an exchange program agreed upon by both the Federation government and the Romulan Senate. In order to improve internal relations, they said, but I guess primarily because they wanted Romulan spokesmen to speak to them on behalf of the federation. They might have furthered the request for a treaty after the Shinzon incident, but they remain suspicious of us. Can't say I blame them, we've been in a state of conflict with them for over 200 years, our relations flicking back and forth from barely tolerable peace to on the verge of a full out war like a galactic lightbulb." She stopped for a moment, thinking a little bit, Number One was on his ninth repetition and started to display beads of sweat from concentration and effort. She held her hands ready to intervene if he should lose the battle with the weight above him.

"I guess that if our assumptions are correct, we can expect everything we want. I don't think they'll be secretive about something as an ion storm. I guess it's something big."

Spunktry grinned, suddenly losing the power in his arms after 17 reps, her hands shooting down to help support the 95 kilos and lift it back upon the bearing. Saved from the weight, he sat up and stretched out, his body awoken with a good amount of adrenaline.

"Guess so. If I were you, I'd have a talk with Sela about this. She might be able to tell you more."

"My thoughts exactly, Gidean. I'm going to get a shower and I'll be on the bridge on 10.30 am. I'll see you there."

USS Basileia, Bridge, September 24, 10.34 hours

"Sorry I'm late, gentlemen. Status?" A voice boomed through the bridge as the turbolift door swung open, showing a tidy silhouette of the Captain tucked in a regular Starfleet uniform. The black uniforms with the greenish blue shoulder pads, the four nits of Captain-hood and the well polished boots. Her black, braided hair flopping down behind her. Sometimes you would forget she was 43 years old and guess she was 30 at most. She did something rather unlikely, but she needed a seat after her wild exercise and thus sat down on the Captain's chair immediately after entering the bridge. The USS Basileia was still moving at Warp 9.56, a slight shudder going through the hull momentarily. Maybe a subspace front that collided with her shielding.

"Ma'am, The ship is doing fine, Life support, weapons, structural integrity and shielding on 100 percent functionality, but the warp core has dropped in 2,2 the last week, for a reason still unknown. Lieutenant Commander Hardy said he was working on it. We can't push the ship past Warp 9.56 without going over 100 ."

"Very well, Ensign Cole. You have the Bridge, Number One." Without any further words, she retreated once more towards the readyroom.

A sudden sound came from a comm-badge lying next to the bed in a slightly darker lit room. It was not as loud as usual, aimed to be slightly less of an impact to Sela's Romulan ears. It was however enough to wake the woman, making her sit up right in her bed, black sleeping robes that were of rather exquisite tailoring showed to drape over her body. She was a short figured woman, lean, but with a certain gravity and stature. About 65 years of age, she looks younger than Captain Hunter, but she has a large birthmark between the line of her jaw and her neck. A result that sprung from theta radiation suffered by her pregnant mother in a safety compromise aboard a science station orbiting a Romulan colony. Through a slight bit of static it can be heard that the words of the woman were repeated once. She put the comm-badge on her robe, the signal reaching the processor more easily now.

"Captain Hunter to Ambassador Sela."

"Ambassador Sela, please come in."

"This is Sela speaking. What is the matter, Captain?"

"Please join me in my readyroom on 11.00 hours. We have some things to discuss."

"Of course," she answered and stood up, making way for the sonic shower and pulling robes out of a rather sizeable closet on the way.

USS Basileia, Captain's Ready Room, September 24, 10.58 hours

Several minutes before eleven, the sound of the door being 'rung' came in, a diatonic tone, first low, then high. Jan's eyes suddenly fall on the door, her mouth opening to make way for her voice.

"Come in."

The door swung open and in the dooropening, Sela stood. She wore a very beautiful garment of a reddish brown color. It was clothing that was worthy of a Praetor, no doubt withstanding.

"You wish to speak with me, Captain?" she formally asked.

"That's right. Please, sit down" she gestured for the seat in front of the desk, all the while taking a good gaze at the woman's clothing. At the very moment the Romulan woman sat down on the chair, she folded her arms together and slightly spun on top of her seat, about 120 degrees each time, left, then right, then left, clearly a symptom of thought, the thought being how to bring this.

"We are on the way towards Romulus, Ambassador," she bluntly said.

"Romulus? I thought we were making first contact. What's going on?"

"The admiral has called for me, Ambassador. I was required to travel to Romulus."

"Has it something to do with my service here?" the Romulan asked, with a strange wonder in her voice. All knew that Sela was not particularly happy on a ship full of humans. After all, they seem to smell bad according to Vulcans and Romulans. She exhibited surprising signs of reluctance when the words reached her mind.

"That's a possibility." Jan looked up at her face again and tapped the top of her desk with a pair of fingers. Tappitytappitytap.

"But, I don't think so. My gut… my instinct, tells me that it is something else. They appear to have specificly asked for this ship – The USS Basileia – to be the one ship that travels to Romulus, unregarding many other ships being closer. My guess is that whatever is going on, they want to involve the Federation, but only through a spokesman of their own species.

"Then, what is your question? It seems you have it all reasonably figured out."

"I want to know whatever they could need the Federation's assistance for, but on the other hand is worth keeping a very close secret."

Sela shifted her weight slightly, maybe a sign of discomfort, but it seemed to be more of a reluctance to speak up. She however spoke clearly, not to long after.

"Many things in the Romulan Star Empire are secrets, captain, from the highest ranks to the lowest. Why do you think that Romulan Intelligence is amongst the most educated and refined in the quadrant? They need to circumvent extreme regulations, countless encryptions and many backup systems to get what they need, and that from their own species. If it is something big, as you put it, I am extremely surprised they even remotely considered asking the Federation for help."

"Well," Jan Hunter spoke, with a slight irritation in her voice. Something nagged her brain, as if there was something that just didn't feel right. She dropped it, for now.

"Things change. That's what the universe is about." She calmly rose to her feet and looked upon the Ambassador.

"That would be all, Ambassador. Thanks for your time." She gestured towards the door and shifted her weight herself. She drastically needed to think. About 5 minutes later, she turned towards the replicator next to her and sighed, pressing a button for vocal input. "A coca cola. Icy cold." She seemed to like that refreshing drink from old. She preferred it over coffee to wake up with, having rediscovered it about 20 years ago. Once the glass with the dark beverage was completely formed, she stood up, grabbing it from the resequencer trey and walked out into the bridge. Grabbing the leaning of the chair, she halfly circled it and sat down, placing the glass on a little console/table in front of her. She didn't speak, and on times like these, there was no speaking with her. The entire bridge crew knew this, so they didn't bother.

USS Basileia, October 8, 14.40 hours

Captains Log, October 8th, 2386. More than two weeks have passed after I have spoken with Admiral Niles. With less than 10 parsecs to go, we have sustained a delay due to an imbalance in the warp core that is already several weeks old now. Our top speed on 100 of output has dropped down towards Warp 9,54. It is awkward, for the entire ship has not been in service for more than 7 months yet and the engine should be able to sustain the top speed of 100 nominal output, which is Warp 9,6, for about 35 days. My Chief Engineer is looking into it daily, but somehow, the Gremlin seems to have rooted itself deeply into the system. If one day, a Gremlin scanner would be invented, the inventor would forever be lauded a hero,

Though Ambassador Sela has been a noteworthy addition to this ship's populace, she has at first proven that Humans and Romulans grow close just as slowly as Humans with Vulcans. What they lack in logic, they have gained in suspicion. I have been trying to find out if she knows more about the situation than she lets on, but she has not botched to my inquiries as of yet. Frankly, I was curious when she started to warm up to us, but to my surprise, she kind of did. In her perspective, it must be a rather challenging undertaking to live on a starship populated by the species that had been an enemy to them for over two centuries. On some occasions she had even sat down with me in the mess hall, during dinner, during lunch. I am finally starting to understand why they have seen the Federation as an enemy so much. The Romulans don't like the perspective of not being in full control. So are the Vulcans. So are humans by the way.

Captains Personal Log, Supplemental: I have received a message from the Ganesian Emirate. I regret to say that it seems our first contact failed. We acted like gentlemen all the way, but our sudden leave sparked their scorn, I think. I have sent a formal apology to the Ganesian High Emissary, hoping that her good experiences aboard the USS Basileia would persuade her to have a more positive point of view. But hell, the mission has priority and I think not even the Romulan Star Empire would make us travel over a hundred lightyears over a trivial matter. I have heard that some crewmembers have enlisted a betting office, putting in wagers on what could be the issue. I should combat these mundane types of recreation, after all, gambling is not always legal in Federation space, but instead I decided to put myself up for three replicator rations on strengthened hostilities between the Klingons and the Romulans. This might get fun.

Captain's Personal Log. October 9th, 2386. So far, the trip towards Romulus has been uneventful to say the most. Most crewmen have so much free time on their hands besides their steadfast duty rosters that they can count the number of space dust particles we cross daily and play a game of Vulcan Chess afterwards. To fill these days of little event, I have scheduled myself and my old veteran mates for 12 hours of time on Holodeck 3, a chance to go back to what we once were. Commandos in the Federation/Tessarian Conflict. It might be a fine chance to get in touch with our past, and to strengthen our bonds of fellowship once more, for I noticed that we slightly grew apart the last few months. Luckily, not even a phaser set to vaporize could separate Gidean and me.

USS Basileia, Holodeck 3, October 9, 13.35

It was a very nice day, today, the sun was brushing, the dense leaves of gigantic Rigellian trees allowed for a huge depth in an almost uninterrupted blanket of dark green. The brushing sun came in visible rays through crevices in the blanket, now and then shining over the Captains eyes. The treebarks were covered in bushes that stretched out like mourning leaves, like willow. The entire environment was filled with green, making it a labyrinth in which specific locations are hardly descried. The Jungle was the green ocean. The Rigellian jungle however, defied description. Jan Hunter's boots softly brushed against the moss like grass, the bushes through which she makes her way. Behind her followed two men, Lieutenant Junior Grade Garry Weatherby and Ensign Ben Olsen of Hazard Team Alpha. About 50 meters to the east, traveling parallel through the massive jungle, was First Commander Gideon Spunktry with his two men; Crewman Daniel Orton of Hazard Team Alpha and Ensign Megan van Dijck of Hazard Team Beta. These six people were six of nine people originally, that made up Jan Hunters spec-op team. She knows and trusts them almost unlike any other on this ship and some look at them with a strange awe. One would not expect a special op to become a Captain once by a long shot.

Due to large amounts of a sediment called isokemacite in the ground, the Rigellian jungle was a hell for special ops. The rock underneath their feet basically disrupted communications, made beaming in and out impossible and even scrambled the readings of scanning waves. Therefore, they did not take tricorders with them, but entered the Holodeck-simulation without any equipment other than concussion rifles especially equipped to emit a harmless, but shortly painful burst. The weapons of the simulated enemies had the same principle. This simulation was meant for fun, not to injure someone.

A soundless gesture of her right index and middle finger stretched forward together meant to show them that her two men were supposed to go around a very large three around the left. She would then move around the right, a company of three Tessarians would be standing behind them. They were sold out by their rather elevated tone of speech. With a sudden movement, the Captain, Mr Weatherby and Mr Olsen came to life altogether, each jumping one of the enemies in a controlled fashion, quick swipes of their arms disarming them. The captain dropped to a low to deliver a swipe of her leg at the shins of her adversary and then made herself land on his neck with her elbow, neutralizing the simulated adversary. The two others followed suit rather quickly, but then, the sound of weapons discharging was heard from close to the position of the other team. She turned her head towards Weatherby and Olsen. "Come on, let's help them. I hear more than four heavy pulse rifles. They're with many."

Their feet moved quickly through the bushes, always aiming to make as little noise as possible. Jan had trained her squad well. When they catch up with the other three, they were caught in a firefight, where Spunktry and his two men were huddled behind an even larger tree, firing about to over a rise about 60 meters away, where by the looks of it, eight or more Tessarians were posting out. To add reality to the simulation, unlike the discharges being harmless for the 'players', they left large marks of damage on whatever else they hit; trees, the ground, bushes. There was nothing preventing the team from getting splinters. The situation escalated into a firefight to and fro, between the 6 ops guarded behind the tree and the simulated, but very smart Tessarians behind the ridge.

"God damnit, bunch of Campers."

"There are 13 people behind that ridge, Jan."

"Get me a photonic charge," the captain spoke. After that, she used code language with her fingers to imply that she and her two teammates would try and move around the enemy perimeter on her mark. She fondled the photonic charge in her hand for a moment, holding post behind the tree just like the other team. Her teammates were firing as well, as she was concentrating to pull off her tactic. She had her two men on standby.

"You three hold your guard. Keep them occupied," she spoke to Gidean. Then, she focused on the ridge, looking past the rim of the large , only to cock back just in time for a large pulse to eat away the piece of bark she just hid behind. She did not flinch or let out a sound, she was a rather silent woman when it came to it. She then moved in the open for just a minor second, clicking the top of the charge and arming it, her powerful arm swung it into the air, rotating with a whirring sound, aiming it about 40 meters away.. She then put her concussion rifle to a short burst of high speed blasts, unleashing 7 powerful concussive blasts, like pulses, towards the front, in the path of the photonic charge coming down. One of them impacted the charge, making it detonate right in front of the enemy's eyes. A few loud yells are heard as several of them who were looking over the ridge had themselves temporarily blinded by the flash, Some of them diverged from the group and these things had given Jan Hunter and her team the time they needed to circle the group of Tessarians.

They walked around the perimeter behind the ridge, in an almost perfect circle, keeping the Tessarians center. The technique of circling one's enemy was ancient and practiced in many well trained militaries. The real issue was who circled who first. No matter if you're gravely outgunned in a landscape as this, if your team divides and traps them between multiple details, the enemy becomes overwhelmed. The captain's plan was sound and revolved around this principle.

Within a few minutes, eleven Tessarians would find themselves being trapped between the two teams, only noticed when they started to fire almost right in their backs. To prevent crossfire between friendly units, they weren't completely on the exact opposite side. Their surprise was genuine, when without warning, 5 of them were killed within the first salvo, leaving 6 standing up, raising their hands in the air, pleading for surrender to preserve their lives. The first thing however, the captain notices something.

"Where are the other two?"

At that moment, two things happened at once. The sound of her comm-badge ringing – she put it on silent mode – and the two remaining Tessarians, unaware of their brethren's surrender, sneaking up on Gidean's team, readying their weapons. Jan narrowed her eyes and suddenly tapped her comm-badge, after saying "Computer, Pause." She then talked into the transceiver.

"Captain Hunter here. What is going on?"

"Commander Kaita speaking. We have received a high priority distress call. We need you at the bridge, Ma'am."

"I am…" she suddenly thought of Gidean, starting to walk "… we are on our way, Commander."

When she arrived at Gidean's coordinates, she saw them laughing quite a bit.

"What happened?" Jan asked, rather amused by this behavior.

"Check Gidean out, Ma'am." Ms. Van Dijck grinned. At her words, Jan saw Gidean huddled against the tree, looking up against a blob of purplish light being stilled a mere 50 centimeters from his head. The Tessarian who fired it was still standing behind him, about 20 meters away, the other was aiming to fire at someone else, but the two others had shifted positions since the pausing of the program.

"Jan, I think you made the Tessarians a bit too smart there. We've served together for a hell of a lot of years and I have been nigh mortally wounded only once. There's no way the real Tessarians could have done this."

"What's the matter, big guy? Pride hurt?"

Mr. Spunktry suddenly started to practice the art of silence, slightly disgruntled at the fact that he was surprised by an enemy he deemed inferior.

"Come, let's get to the bridge. There's someone in distress out there."

USS Basileia, Bridge, October 9, 14.50

Merely 6 minutes later, both Captain Jan Hunter and Commander Spunktry were both on the bridge of the USS Basileia. The Captain sat down on her chair, looking to the side, towards the comm officer. "Play it again, Mr, Gosa."

A push on a button on the communications console, positioned close to the helm, allowed for the message to be relayed through the pattern buffers in an attempt to clear it up.

"… … is … … Tellarite… freighter…… heavy damage …… many dead… …e…est… is…"

Galarn Gosa looked towards the side and then back towards the console. "I will attempt to further enhance the signal, but it is highly degraded. I can't give any guarantees."

He went back towards working, the captain watched his actions from her chair, now and then casting a sideward glance towards Gidean.

"…This is the Tellarite … freighter Kassan IV. …'ve ta…en heavy damage from an a…roid impa... Request ass……nce. Leaking rad…tion cloud…"

"This is the best I can do, Ma'am," Galarn said slightly embarrassed. Commander Kaita, who was the Chief intelligence officer aboard the USS Basileia, suddenly looked over his shoulder and added.

"They managed to include the coordinates of their asteroid collision. Distance: 0.3 lightyears."

"It's allright. I think we've heard enough. Set a course, Miss Cole"

"Yes Ma'am!" she uttered in a rather vigorous manner.

"Captain Hunter to Engineering, we're going to need everything squeezed out of that warpcore for a moment," her voice boomed through the Engineering comm.

"Yes, Captain. Upping power output to 118 ." Jan looked about slightly worried. She knew the Basileia was quick, but distress calls were almost never exaggerated. She wanted to be on time very badly, and so she authorized to put her foot down on the throttle. There were lives at stake here.

"Okay, Miss Cole. You're clear for Warp 9.9… Engage!"

Coles swift fingers rattle over the comm console, her fingers stroking upwards over a slider, a slight vibration moving through the bulkheads of the ship when the acceleration started, then the lights elongated, the sign of creating a warpfield. The ship was at Warp 8 within 20 seconds, but then, the ascent to higher numbers went slower. "Warp 9." Cole uttered, then tracked the progress slowly.

"Warp 9,2… Warp 9.5" Now, clear tremors went through the ship as the reactor exceeded its nominal maximum output, towards warp 9.6. Jan did not like to burn up oil like this, but she knew that lives were more important then a starship.

"Warp 9.7,.. Warp 9,75" Suddenly, a relais bursted, sparks of a discharge came down over a rather disgruntled Tantheir, the female Klingon Chief Science Officer.

"P'takh Arg'kash Mahg Tah! What the hell was that?"

She rather quickly started to work on finding the answer of what happened, as a feed from Engineering was displayed on one of the back side monitors.

"Sorry Captain. A premature release of energy overloaded three relais. One on the bridge, two here in Engineering. Matter stream is destabilizing with a grade of 0.02 per second. I can give you only 46 minutes, then we'll have to get back to nominal output. I can't frigging figure out what the hell is wrong with my baby."

"Just treat her right, Hardy, like you always do. Warn us if another spike is coming up," the Captain spoke, only to be interrupted by Lieutenant Iris Cole at the helm.

"Warp 9.9, Captain, holding steady."

The ship was shaking for a moment, adapting to the strain of high warp. Normally, the ship would be able to handle 9.95 without a single bump or bruise, for about an hour. But the strange imbalance in the engine, the Gremlin, as it had been called already, just wouldn't go away. It really started to earn its name, for 14 double shifting engineers have done unsuccessful attempts so far. It was also because of this that the Captain did not dare to increase the speed even more. Warp 9.9 was fine.

USS Basileia, October 9, 15.34

Suddenly, the USS Basileia dropped back towards Warp 9, a surge in several EM relais convincing the Engineering staff that enough is enough. After 44 minutes, the power was quickly decreased back to slightly under hundred percent.

"Captain, the warp core needs to cool off slightly, the best I can give you is 9.2." Hardy said.

"At warp 9.2, we will need another 7 minutes." Jan responded, then thought for a few seconds. "Okay, Lieutenant Gosa, relay a response. Tell them who we are and that we'll be there in seven minutes."

"Aye, Captain." Gosa responded.

It was only several minutes later that they dropped out of warp. The elongated silhouette of the ship suddenly shrunk down to its ordinary size. What laid before them was a wasteland of asteroids. It was a rather dense field as well. Large asteroids and small fragments being thrown together and apart like balls of various size on a massive billiard table.

"Careful, Lieutenant," Captain Hunter uttered to helmsman Cole. "Ease us through. Any response yet, Lieutenant Gosa?"

"No, Ma'am," he replied "I'm not receiving a single word, not a single bit of static"

"I don't like this. Mr Sybok, do a proximity scan."

The Vulcan tactical officer suddenly bursted out in activity, tapping console buttons by the dozens, putting in resolution, isolating a fragment of the panorama to conduct scans towards. The readings come in within the next five seconds, readings that make the stoic Vulcan raise a little brow.

"Captain. There is indeed a large amount of radiation emanating from the craft. We are already in it, but it's getting denser. I recommend we raise shield immediately."

"I hear you, Sybok, Raise shields."

A slight glimmer surround the craft as its state of the art shielding started to surround the craft. The radiation, which pelts the craft in larger and larger concentrations as it comes closer to the side of disaster.

"Distance: Two million kilometers and closing." Cole uttered calmly. Her eyes turned back towards the captain, who was leant back in the seat, which finally seemed to be more ductile to the shape of her body. She finally started to feel at home in it, maybe partially because the last few weeks, she has sat in it more than ever before. Its leather finally made way for her butt. She popped her neck slightly, with a surprisingly audible sound, as she got a visual on the large view-screen.

The 530 meter craft calmly eased down at the bow of the freighter, its lighter shape stoked against the dark brown of the Tellarite ship, as well as it being a case of round shapes versus big box. There they were, practically bow to bow, while the bridge team pondered on a way to get to the people inside of the Freighter. Many hails have gone unanswered and they detected that the power to their life support had just failed. Now however, the radiation clugged the Basileia's sensors so much that they did not see inside the freighter anymore. "The scanners are disabled from the tau radiation, sir."

The captain turned to the side and thought for a moment. "Can we get a shuttle through to the freighter?"

"No, ma'am," Sybok answered clearly. "Their impulse manifolds aren't as thick and well protected as the ones on the Basilei. Their engines will not be able to work in here."

Do transporters still work, Mr. Yate?"

Throughout the comm from engineering, the sound of Lieutenant Commander Harry Yate's voice boomed.

"Transporters are still operating, Ma'am, we need to get within 100 meters of the Tellarites' bow. Else, the radiation interferes with them too much as well."

"Make it so, helmsman Cole," the Captain spoke clearly towards the young woman pilating the Basileia.

Within moments, the impulse engines suddenly kick back to work, sending a slight tremor of torque through the ship's bow. It sailed soundlessly through the clouds of dense radiation, closer to the hull of the freighter, until there was about 30 meters left between both hulls. The silence was almost unbearable.

"Captain, we are in place", Iris cole muttered.

"Good, keep us about. Captain Hunter to Hazard Team Alpha. Make yourselves ready for an away-mission."

USS Basileia, Briefing Room, October 9: 15.47 hours

Lieutenant-Commander Selar stepped out of his quarters, finishing the touches to his uniform as he made his way to the turbolift. His face, like a Vulcan's face should be, unmoving, his eyes not even slightly moving into the glare of the decks passing by. He was the leader of Hazard Team Alpha, and on his way to the briefing room. Walking calmly, but quickly, through the large corridor of Deck 11, entering a room to the right. It slightly resembled a small cinema, with a viewscreen, several datapads stalled on top of several of the tables and a small control console below the screen. Selar was already standing firm in front of the screen, waiting for the rest of the team to come. Rather quickly after him, the others started to stream in.

The second one was Thei, another Vulcan, also with wellpolished boots. Then, after the third, the other six came in within the twenty next seconds. Selar heightened his stance and perked his chest forward slightly…

"Thei, Lieutenant Weatherby, Crewman Torin, Ensigns Ben and Annie Olsen, Crewman K'Zin, Orton and Astin. Please take your seats now."

They all quickly did as they were asked, looking forward towards the unmoving face of their Commander. Torin was a Klingon male, K'Zin was a Klingon female and Thei and Selan himself were Vulcan. The other five were human. Looking at their pads, skimming the important words, they looked back up, waiting for the Lieutenant Commander to start his briefing. They did not have to wait long, for when they all turned silent, he started.

"At 14.38 hours this afternoon, the Basileia had picked up an urgent distress call from a Tellarite freighter. We responded to this call and turned about to move towards their site of accident. The radiation levels outside are extreme, the radiation blocking out all means of long range communication and impairing our scanner banks. We are now 30 meters of their bow and will attempt to rescue these Tellarites, if they are still alive, but be clear that we do not know what happened inside, therefore the utmost caution is required. For the nature of this mission, I will submit several guidelines to be explicitly followed at all times, when on board the Tellarite vessel

One: You will not go anywhere alone. We will divide into three Hazard Details of three men each and we will stay in these three groups at all times

Two: We will each take a standard issue phaser with us, should the need arise to either use aggressive means in circumvention of locked down doors or in extreme cases for our defense and no one will ever attempt to disengage their helmets. Is this understood?"

A very full 'yes sir' is bellowing through the briefing chamber.

"Do any of you have questions regarding this mission? If so, ask them now."

Silence.

"Excellent, you will all go to the equipment room and retrieve your hazard suits and helmets. Detail one, Torin, Ben Olsen and myself. We will afterwards proceed to transporter room one. Detail two, Weatherby, Annie Olsen and Orton, to transporter room two. Thei, Astin and K'Zin, transporter room three."

On the bridge, all was ready to govern the transport. All available energy was rerouted to service the transporters, to boost the safety and compensate for the particle yield of the radiation cloud. The captain sits up in her chair, waiting for a word. And there it came.

"Lieutenant-Commander Selar to Captain Hunter; We are ready to commence the mission. Hazard Team Alpha is standing on the transporter pads."

"You're clear to go, Selar. Mr. Sybok, lower our shields for a few seconds. If we hold them up, they might conflict with the radiation particles making the matter stream unstable."

"Aye, captain," the stoic Tactical officer uttered and commenced on powering down the ship's shielding.

The next moment, the Hazard team was starting on their way towards the interior of the freighter, their matter stream condensed and traveled through the hull, through the radiation drenched vacuum outside into the hull of the freighter, calmly rematerializing. It was done with constant compensation, but it was done successfully.

USS Basileia, Bridge, October 9, 16.00 hours

"Beam-out successful, Ma'am." Sybok uttered. "I am raising…"

"SHIELDS!" captain Hunter suddenly yelled.

Suddenly, from an angle about 60 degrees apart, short EM spikes came forward, three of them. They all glided through space, visualizing within an instant. A very sophisticated cloaking system held their presence a secret. They were not large, each about 220 meters in length, technologically about 20 years inferior to the Federation standard of technological advances when coming to weapons and shielding. Without a single warning, all three started firing. From a tube shaped launcher on their front hull came three photon torpedoes each. They moved by with about 4 kilometers per second, orange glowing projectiles homing in on the Basileia from a slightly downward angle with even more speed. All hell broke loose

Suddenly, the entire ship was shaken violently as the first three torpedoes collide with the ship's hull. They explode wildly, causing ripples on the ventral section of the saucer, only 50 meters away from the ventral torpedo launchers. The second and third torpedo were aimed at another spot; the ventral deflector dish. With a heaven shattering sound, the impacts put a massive torque through the hull, demolishing the deflector dish, an extremely quick handle from Commander John Kaita locked out the deflector just in time to stop the energy surge from the plasma conduits to reach into the critical systems. A powerful shock was sent through the entire ship, the impact automatically spurted the red alert, people were thrown about across every deck. The impact recoil of the torpedoes threw the Basileia off about 100 meters. Iris Cole, who was at the helm, now climbed back on top of her seat. The second and third torpedoes from the three ships impacted with the dorsal shielding, sending wild tremors through the vessel, but without harm.. They were all very neatly targeting placing in the armor plating, shield emitters, etc, but the response of the Basileia's Bridge crew was extremely fast.

"Holy Sh.. Status?"

"Our main deflector has been demolished, one of our dorsal torpedo bays is out of order. Dorsal shielding down to 71 percent."

"Spur the engines! Auxilliary power to shielding, charge phasers, god DAMNIT!"

The captain was rather mad at the fact that she had let her ship fall into this ambush. In retrospect, it all seems so obvious. There however was no time to have a flashback, for the three ships zoomed overhead. "You, scan them. You, start flying, You, keep the shields active, You, charge the ablative hull! Move!"

The Basileia moved in action very quickly, the large, but very maneuverable ship strutting its stuff. Now it was readied to the highly aggressive action of the still unknown adversaries, the scales looked a lot better. They were with three, but their combined firepower was insufficient yet to beat the USS Basileia head on. There however was one catch, which was the fact that they were in the middle of an asteroid field. Jan had let herself be led into a very dangerous predicament. The ship came in action, starting to come about, just as the three ships did. They aimed again it seemed, their sensors obviously better protected against the radiation. Captain Hunter cocked her head back to Sybok. "Sybok, manual aim, all dorsal phaser banks ready! Gidean, help him! Full power! Fire!"

A sudden tumult rages through the bow of the ship, the fingers tapping wildly over the tactical consoles. The fully charged type 12 phaser strips started to glow, gathering energy towards a point of discharge. The five strips were aligned to converge on targets set by the two officers. With the sound of a cutting beam, the two right and the one middle phaser strip converged its fire to the right, an upward angle of 40 degrees. The powerful phasers immediately impacted with the shields of one of the crafts in a small interval, giving it a hell of a punch to the impulse rods and their bussards, no critical damage, the two strips on the left of the dorsal saucer surface also discharging, towards a second ship that zoomed by on the left. They aimed exactly at the same spot, cutting over the shield surface, no heavy damage. "Quantum Torpedoes, Aft launchers, target the lead vessel. Fire!"

Without a single question to the order, Sybok targeted the quantum torpedo to the ship that passed right. It's dorsal shields were down to 35 percent from the triple phaser punch, while two blue flaring quantum torpedoes were fired from the aft launchers, one from the dorsal and one from the ventral launcher, they converged, less than 15 meters away from one another, within a slight arc around an asteroid coming in between. One of the torpedoes slightly scraped the surface of the asteroid, leaving a slightly singed skidmark. The force applied by the scrape spinning the torpedo off track and making it explode in a bright, large explosion, without hitting target. The second one went on without interception, a front disruptor from the ship attempting to hit the torpedo, but narrowly missing and thus causing it to impact to the right front side of the ship, a massive concussive force tearing a gap in their hull and damaging numerous systems aboard. They were halfly disabled. The other two went for another pass, this time overhead. Their ventral weaponry started to show what it could do, quite some plasma disruptors and several more photon torpedoes to impact on key placements of the Basileia class. Again, 3 shield emitters were lightly damaged, the bridge suffered an unwelcome blow, causing structural integrity to go down slightly. Two disruptors were aimed for the front dorsal torpedo launcher and about 5 disruptors and a small batch of torpedoes were aimed for various phaser strips. The damage however was minimal, as the ships clearly acted in a hit and run fashion and counted on the surprise of their target if they were to succeed. Dorsal shielding got a pretty powerful beating.

"Dorsal shields down to 68 percent, compensating by drawing energy from auxiliary deflector and the defective main deflector. We took 13 minor hits, right secondary dorsal phaser strip down to 50 percent. Microfractures on decks 5, 14 and the bridge."

"Captain, they are altering course again, they are going deeper into the asteroid field."

"Don't follow, helmsman. Sybok, more shielding, more energy to the hull."

She panted for a while, this not being at all what she would expect when finally getting to the site.

"If they are very smart, then we might have a problem. Take us in the other side, that buys us some time to think of a way out."

"Aye aye, Ma'am," Iris Cole said and turned about, very adeptly dodging the large rocks that piled up more and more around the Basileia.

Tellarite freighter, October 9, 16.00 hours

All of a sudden, a narrow setting matter stream suddenly visualized in what appeared to be one of the freighters cargo bays. It was piled with rather expensive metals, monotanium, tritanium, a small amount of tetraburnium and duritanium. A few replicators and for the rest crates to which there was no telling what was inside.

The matter streams quickly condensed, expanding towards the size of a human, when suddenly, the molecules began being completely resequenced as they were. Three men suddenly stood tall, being a Klingon, a Vulcan and a human, their phasers and their tricorders ready. They were, however, not ready for what awaited them, immediately becoming wide-eyed at what they saw.

"You three better not move, or I will vaporize your heads," the sound of a raspy, Tellarite voice. They were all standing ready, their weapons, which appeared to be a type of pulse rifles, were aimed at the three standing together.

Suddenly, the entire freighter was rocked from what was registered as a large set of explosions nearby. Some of the tellarites and Ben Olsen were almost rocked off their feet from the power sent through the hull.. The ground trembled and many of the Tellarites suddenly grasped onto the crates. They were positioned very smartly, as if they expected the explosions to occur.

"What the hell was that?"

"I believe it was an attack," Selar replied, slightly puzzled as well.

"P'tak…" Torin suddenly grunted, rather lowly, his cranial ridges seemed to slightly tighten, but that was just what happened when Klingons were angered to an extent like this.

They were with twelve. Twelve Tellarites that came closer and closer, from all directions. It was as if they fell prey to a very deliberately planned assault. Lieutenant Commander Selar would point his phaser up reluctantly, and then suddenly opened his hand, allowing the small device to fall to the ground, clacking several times before coming to a standstill.

"Lower your weapons," Selar suddenly said, very quietly. Only at his word, the other two seemed to nod, disengaging their phasers and throwing them to the ground, the same clacking sound, that once more turns into silence.

Ben Olsen was also one to grunt, but he obeyed his superior without question. Not doing anything to upset their captors at this moment was a good idea anyway. Without much movement, he kept quiet, waiting for the events to unfold. He didn't like it, but who would in this situation?

"Start walking. That way," the Tellarite hissed well audibly. He didn't leave for anything to be misinterpreted, as the twelve men walked in a wave formation around the three captives, circling them until they were in front and behind them. Their tricorders were taken away, and they were guided through several freight sections. They made sure to watch closely how they had moved. Their trained eyes took in every detail about the environment. Wall mounted consoles, okudagrams of the vessel and more, to see what they were up against. Wonder however arose, wonder about why they would use a distress call to lure them into a trap? Was it a coincidence that we happened to respond?

The away team was suddenly rejoined. The three groups that had separately beamed over had all been rounded up, but when the third group was forced into the chamber, the painful moans of a woman were heard.

"Annie!" Olsen suddenly jumped up, wanting to move towards what he saw. His sister Annie Olsen had received the wrath of a pulse rifle. The hazard suit seems to have taken the full blow of the hit, but she was still in very bad shape, lacerations and third degree burns on her shoulder, her chest was scorned. It was clear that they were multiple shots. The Tellarites had ordered the other two to drag Annie along..

Three Tellarites suddenly moved their weapons towards the impulsive Ben Olsen, making the message clear. "You will stay where you are."

The voice of the Tellarite commander boomed through the chamber. "Put them in the brigs. Separate them; one per cell."

"But sir. There are only eight cells."

"Silence! Put the wounded woman with him!" he responded, pointing at Ben. Over twenty Tellarites were converging on the nine, throwing them in the brigs, each apart, except for brother and sister Olsen, who were eased into the eighth cell. Finally, Torin, the male Klingon of the group, spoke his mind, with a low, growling tone of voice. "I knew you Tellarites had an affinity for crime, but I didn't expect this."

"Silence, Klingon," the leader said, easing his men out of the brig.

"Get her ready to fly. Prepare the second warpcore. Get the shields online. Get us out of here."

Those words lingered behind, for the nine to hear, on which K'Zin let herself be heard too.

"P'sah, Krah!. They were waiting for us to come aboard!"

"It appears so," Orton uttered.

"Anyone hurt?" Selar inquired, while checking his environmental suit. The Tellarites did not bother to take them off.

"I'm ok, Annie is quite seriously injured," Weatherby said.

"We're all ok," the sound of Thei's voice filled the room. They all nodded.

"Aahh.. My chest is… burning." The sound of Annies voice was well audible. She was hurt, they could tell. The entire Alpha team was tough as nails, they don't complain over a little burn.

"Try to lie still, sis. I'll attempt to patch you up a bit…"

"Tempting," the woman grinned slightly and positioned herself sitting against the wall, but never moved her eyes off of herself. Slightly huddled together in a slight stress of injury.

"How much experience did you say you had with medicine?"

"I have a Level 3 grade in field medicine. In Cap'n Hunter's team, I was the closest thing they had to a field medic." Ben Olsen tried to de-escalate the situation, tried to break the tension with a little humour. His hands travel over her chest, then towards his own, hoping that he had taken something he could use to treat her. His hands traveled into the packing of his Hazard environmental suit. They were very fortunate, that they weren't stripped of their environmental suit.

"Well, have anything? I can't stand this burning…" Annie suddenly cringed, trying to banish it from her mind. Too bad she was not Vulcan at this moment.

"Luckily, I do."

Out of a slit in Ben Olsen's environmental suit he moved a small hypospray.

"This is Asolfynine. It has various purposes," Olsen started to explain, much to help his sister focus on the sound of his voice. "It's a combat cocktail used by some soldiers who have been out in the field so long. It numbs the lymphatic and nervous system, blocking out pain to the body pretty well. Ironic though, that afterwards you wake up with a splitting headache."

"No headache can be so bad… as this. Give it to me…" the woman grunted, clearly not happy about her vulnerability right now. Ben Olsen smiled slightly and moved his hand to program the hypospray. "20 milligrams should be sufficient. I don't want to numb any more of you than necessary."

"Just do it bro, just give it to me," her voice became slightly annoyed, but people with injuries are not known for their patience.

Ben Olsen moved the hypospray towards his sister's neck, pressing it down against where the main artery lies underneath. A slight puffing sound is made as the substance is injected into her body. Almost directly afterwards, the woman started to calm down, the burning subsided, was sucked away from the wounds in an almost magical manner. "I love you, bro."

"I love you to, Annie." They calmed down, sitting against one another. The other seven seemed to be either listening to the two or thinking of a way out.

USS Basileia, Engineering, October 9, 16.20 hours

"Shit!" The sound of profanity moves through the room, rather unchecked. The warp core seemed to have started pulsing, a large amount of energy being diverted to magnetic constriction in order to keep her going and keep her from bursting. Dick Hardy, who wasn't completely over his gastrointestinal distress, didn't think about it anymore, as the entire Engineering section of the vessel was suddenly turned into a war zone.

"Report!" Hardy's voice did not leave room for request. Anyone screwing with his warp core would get a severe anger out of him. He mostly channeled that anger towards his subordinates, a good sign for them to learn that he was fully serious.

"Countless of relais are fried. Magnetic constriction is fluctuating. The main deflector has lost its dish, the feedback pulse has demolished over a thirty plasma conduits. We're royally screwed, sir" Harry Yate muttered.

"Thank you. Now start fixing something. And get more men!"

"Aye sir."

Now, 16 people were busy monitoring the warp core, plagued by powerful sparks coming from defective relais, it was however morely show. The sparks weren't harmful, they only slightly burned. An Ensign suddenly was covered in an outburst of fire, the sound of baffled yelling moving through the room, as Yate suddenly walked towards the wall, dishooking a fire extinguisher. Within six seconds, three people were spraying the icy cold foam over his burning body.

"Get him to sickbay! God damnit! That's the fourth one already! Watch out for yourselves. How is the plasma mixture coming?"

"It's just coming, sir. We've finally managed to stabilize it some more. It's back down to 6 thousand particles per micron."

Dick Hardy looked at the Ensign that told him that. His name was Dwight Ferguson. "Well congratulations, Ensign! But what are you standing around for? There are more plasma injectors that need to be regulated. What are you sitting on your ass for?"

"Nothing, sir. On my way sir." Ferguson moved towards the warp core and looked about, taking post at an empty console at the ring around the core itself. With a quick stride, the disgruntled Harry Yate barely dodged a little padding of wall that was launched away from a blowout of an EPS Relais. The ground was riddled with insulation material and pieces of wall, now and then a spark came. They had been quite fortunate. Behind him, a Lieutenant was moving up the ladder towards the second level of engineering, taking post at the harmonic sequencer. Everything was out of whack.

"Hardy, something about this doesn't sit right from my point of view."

"Wanna talk, Harry? Wanna talk? We don't have the time to talk!" Hardy answered to Harry Yate.

"How can two low yield torpedoes to our deflector be such a massive disaster? Every system in this Engine room is on the brink of collapse."

"Like I said," Dick Hardy added. "We haven't got the…"

"So…" LCDR Yate suddenly interrupted his superior. "You think it is normal that they got through our defenses so easily? The bioneural circuitry of this vessel should have easily intercepted the deflector surge."

"You're right, Harry. It should have." Dick replied. "But it didn't. Like I said, everything's broken here. I'll note it in my log once we're in safety. Now get a move on and repair something."

"Aye aye." Harry Yate turned up towards the second floor, yelling up. "How are things going up there?"

"Two shits in a one shit strumpet, siih" Lieutenant McNey uttered.

"What does that mean?"

"We're royally focked, siih."

Hardy then suddenly blew a temper tantrum, dropping a datapad.. "God damned that's it!... Engineering to Bridge!"

USS Basileia, Bridge, October 9, 16.23 hours

"Bridge…" Captain Hunter replied, still rather caught up in the moment, she clamped her hands around the leanings of her chair pretty tightly.

"We're looking at 30 hours of Emergency repairs, Ma'am. I recommend we get out of here as quickly as possible."

"Impossible. We have nine men aboard that derelict freighter. I won't leave them behind." The captain sat up and looked about towards Sybok for a moment, as if taking a glance in confirmation.

"Ensign Cole, getting anything from sensors?"

"Not much, Ma'am," Nathan Cole replied. "They are completely saturated with the radiation. I have had to broaden the resolution, but now we probably can lock onto their ships again. They're large enough to be descried. Small chunks of asteroid are a danger though." The Captain nodded.

"Well done, Cole, Cole… I mean, Helmsman Cole…" Having two family members work on the bridge at the same time sometimes causes a little bit of confusion. Iris was Nathan's older sister, but they were both still very young, less than 25.

"Lieutenant Cole, manual navigation. Use your eyes. Mr. Gosa, give her a good vision. On viewscreen."

A double aye, Ma'am fills the room and the screen in front changes to a wider view. Iris Cole uses a moment to shift her weight.

"Comfy?"

"Aye, Captain."

"All right," Jan Hunter said. "Inertial Dampers to full. Take us in further."

A nod comes from helmsman Cole and she lets controls come out of the console, almost similar to that of a boeing, but very much more sophisticated, the first starship using a 5 axis navigation system. Captain Hunter sat back in her seat, scraping her finger over the right armrest. She was in thought, but suddenly spoke out.

"They are playing a cat and mouse game with us. They're forcing us into hiding."

"It would appear so," Sybok replied. "I recommend that we be on our guard, Captain. There may be …"

Suddenly an impact rocked the ship from behind, it shook it less violently, as the shielding seemed to absorb the blow. Jan was lunged forward, but managed to stay in her seat. "…more of them around?" she cynically replied and lifted herself back into sitting position. "Evasive maneuvers, Miss Cole. Sybok, analysis!"

"It appeared to have been a photon torpedo, Captain. It impacted with our port nacelle. No damage."

"Give me a visual and tell me what it is, Spunktry, return the favour" Jan ordered, then moved off the seat, thinking it is time she was doing something herself. As Spunktry and Sybok manned the weapons, she went to sit beside them on a third console, her fingers starting to rattle over the controls.

"I can't really thoroughly scan it, the resolution is still too low, but from what I can tell, it appears to be a torpedo ship. It has 8 front and 6 aft launchers. 340 meters tall."

"What species?"

"I don't know, Captain, but we need to be careful, with our main deflector down, our shields are quite a deal less powerful than normal."

The Basileia glided very adeptly through the thickening field of asteroids, the smaller vessel homing in on it though, it kept halfly lurking behind asteroids almost the entire way. Spunkty suddenly tapped the console, firing one quantum torpedo back towards the craft, an answer to the photon torpedo that hit them. The blue lighting torpedo sailed through the vacuum of space, but was prematurely intercepted by a small asteroid that remotely flailed in its path. A large, blue flaring explosion caused a concussive force to push away several asteroids, but the strange unidentified ship, though clearly belonging to the same faction as the three smaller once, used the gap created by the detonation to move through a shortcut. It homed in again, and now, four orange lighting photon torpedoes were launched towards the vessel again.

"Hard to starboard, Miss Cole."

She didn't need to say that, for the sudden attack flared the very able navigator Iris cole to steer the ship across a larger asteroid, then very sharply to the left. Thank god for those inertial dampers. Two of the torpedoes miss the butt end of the vessel with about 50 and 100 meters, but the other two impact, one on the back, close to the aft dorsal launcher, one to the right nacelle strut, giving the shielding quite a blow.

"Shields down to 51 , Captain. I recommend we try and find cover as well. Their ships are smaller and have the advantage. Our shields have 40 of normal output power due to our lost deflector." Sybok looked at his readings, Tantheir grunted and attempted to keep the power distribution in line with the system's demands.

"I see. Take us around this asteroid," the captain said clearly.

The asteroid in front of them was quite large, about four kilometers in diameter, not nice and rounded off, but rather rough, with many sharp mountain ridges and craters. The ship moves very closely to the surface, the admirable skill of Lieutenant Cole helping the ship through the superficial ridges of the large asteroid. It was a very scary sight, as you would not trust anyone to do this unless they had years of experience. Many knew that helmsman Iris Cole was young and inexperienced still, but she had a massive talent for sure.

"Son of a Bitch! Look! The other ones!" Spunktry suddenly yelled. He was right. The viewscreen showed the two smaller ships suddenly come forth from behind smaller asteroids that just came in sight. The captain's eyes widened. The architects of this ambush were good tacticians, she had to admit that. Her eyes turn towards the side and she started to configure a next batch of quantum torpedoes.

"Fire all forward phasers and launchers!" she yelled, then both Sybok and herself would almost synchronizedly push the discharge button. The Basileia was facing the two 220 meter long incoming ships. The third one was probably managing its repairs in a secluded spot. The two ships came in very fast and it seems that they already had their weapons ready. What came was a barrage of unsuspected magnitude. Each craft unleashed 4 photon torpedos and all the plasma disruptors it could manage, but at the same time, three quantum torpedoes were squeezed out of the ventral launchers in a belly roll to show them the dorsal saucer. The type-12 phaser strips let out three discharges. One torpedo missed, the other two impacted with the ventral section of one of the smaller alien vessels. Two of the phaser discharges also impacted, creating explosions and multiple small hull breaches to the second ship. It's shielding being down to 40 . However, the USS Basileia was caught directly in their path and none of the enemy attacks missed. The shields were pelted, on top of the phaser strips, the shield emitters and several isolinear welds. One torpedo managed to get through, right on top of a weld. The ship was rocked violently as even more plasma disruptors raged on top of the rear dorsal section.

"Damage report!" Captain Hunter yelled

"Multiple hull breaches on 6 decks. Our dorsal shields are failing. Medical teams are being dispatched as we speak." Tantheir spoke.

"Seal those breaches. Power from secondary systems to dorsal shielding!"

"The torpedo ship turned around, I'm pretty sure they took the other way around the asteroid," Nathan Cole concluded.

"Smart sons of bitches," the Captain grunted.

Hunter looked at Spunktry, who was seemingly rather quiet, but suddenly turned about, slapping the top of the console. "Captain, I might have an Idea."

"Well, quickly! Cole, keep us moving."

"Jan, did you see that deep cavity in the big asteroid?"

"Yes, we passed close to it in our attempts to escape the torpedo frigate. I'm open to suggestions." Jan grunted very unhappily, not liking the fact that despite of her long tactical experience, her ship was tossed around like a 530 meter playtoy.

"I scanned it, Captain, It's almost nine hundred meters deep. Our weapons may be strong enough to blast it to pieces if we fire into it."

Her head cocked around wildly, moving her hand to rub beneath her nose.

"I like it. Make it so. Commander Sybok, divert power from phasers to engines. Miss Cole, bring us around the asteroid."

"Yes, ma'am," she answered.

In the mean time, the three vessels were regrouping. At all time they were keeping close communication's silence and they were seemingly moving off, but only to turn about once more.. The two ships moved around the asteroid again, the other way, as the torpedo ship resumed its course.. The 6 powerful impulse engines of the Basileia class suddenly burst off in a rage, propelling the large vessel to a kilometer per second in less than 2 seconds of time. Though the bridge crew was pushed back in their seats slightly, the inertial dampers keep the human element from being crushed by intolerable G forces. Suddenly, the Basileia breaks close orbit, moving up in a 60 degree vector. The assailants were still behind, not yet emerging over the asteroid's horizons.

"Okay, Miss Cole. Let her slide!" the Captain said, quite loudly, herself having taken control of both two front ventral launchers.

What follows, was a show of extreme piloting ability. Cole used the ships forward kinetics, while creating a sideward rotation with a port propulsor. The entire ship started to turn as if it was an Audi Quattro on a muddy rally road and while caught in the sideward movement, the front of the ship was pointed right towards the large, deep cavity. The captain held on to the console very powerfully, and suddenly moved her finger towards a large, rectangular blue button torpedo discharge. A sudden sound emanates from the bottom of the ship, each 0.2 seconds a quantum torpedo squeezed its way through one of the two tubes. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, like ruffling the drum. An awkward trail of blue lighting projectiles suddenly disappear in the depths of the asteroid's cavity.

Suddenly, a shockwave came out through the cavity, upwards, giving the shields a big push. "Shields to max!" Spunktry growled as they were rocked like small puppets. Now, the brunt of the shockwave is noticed as massive cracks travel over the entire hull of the asteroid. The 4 kilometer rock seemed to expand as from its center, chunks are being spat out from the cracks, the disintegration of the large mass then starting to generalize outwards. The two small ships just came into view as the asteroid finally lost cohesion and the main shockwave was unleashed upon the environment. The eight quantum torpedoes proved more than enough to detonate the asteroid and using its debris as a weapon. Because the Basileia was above the cavity, there was little to no debris going her way, but the enemies were less fortunate as a chunk of almost a kilometer in size suddenly sailed outwards in an uncontrollable pitch. The last thing they would see was a massive chunk of sediments becoming larger and larger, then enveloping their entire viewscreen, then turning to an eerie, deathly black. Both the smaller ships were hit by the fragments, exploding into a million pieces and leaving two sizeable dents in its surface.

Sybok suddenly turned towards Nathan Cole and walked over to the sensory console. Together, they attempt to further boost the scanners. Communication was still offline.

"Both smaller ships have been destroyed. I have lost the frigate," Sybok spoke clearly.

"Be on your guard, people."

USS Basileia, Infirmary, October 9, 17.06 hours

"Stay down, Lieutenant!" Dinox uttered, clearly a little bit on edge from the many people coming in. Lieutenant Joan Fitchpatrick was on her way to her post, guarding hull integrity on deck 18, as suddenly, a plasma manifold overhead cracked only half a meter away.

Another person lied beside them, one whose future was very grim. It was Crewman Lirean Payne of Lieutenant Sor's Tactical detail.

"Dinox, he's suffering from a great amount of third degree burns and his hand and lower arm is almost completely destroyed by the plasma. If we don't triage the situation now, he will certainly die."

"I know Mr. Fauts, I am as busy as you are." He quickly administers a hypospray to Ms. Fitchpatrick and moved over with a dermal regenerator.

"The limb will have to wait, give him 5 cc of Arithrazine, to counter the radiation, then help me regenerate his burns."

The Infirmary was very busy toway. The surprise attack certainly left its mark. No one suspected a thing when those ships dropped out of warp and when they got off with a direct assault to the ship, many crewmen were injured, not to speak of the rigors they have to live through right now. Not only is the infirmary loaded with wounded, it isn't even the only one. The Basileia has two sickbays. It makes attempting a triage very difficult, sometimes, but most of the heavier cases were transported to Sickbay 1, where the Denobulan Chief Medical Officer Dinox was working, heavily understaffed with only five doctors and medical assistance to help him.

"What do we have?" Dinox asked calmly, towards Fauts, who was the assistant Chief Medical Officer.

"6 Severe cases. Three heavy plasma burns, 1 punctured stomach, a shattered leg and a hemorrhage in this woman's brain, not to mention the fracture in her skull." He pointed to Harriet Gayle, a Lieutenant of the Science Department, who got a piece of bulkhead on her face in astrometrics.

"Her first!" Dinox yelled. "Get everybody with medical expertise you can find, Mr. Johnsson."

"Yes, doctor." Medical assistant Fritz Johnsson spurted out of the sickbay.

Tellarite Freighter, October 9, 17.15 hours

The grim, brownish walls of the Tellarite brig were rather unsettling and cold, the doors of their cells being level 9 forcefields. Fred Astin, who sat alone in his cell, was busy killing time by tapping the forcefield with his boot. Each time he did, a surge was heard, and the forcefield visualized. It gave not much, except a slight recoil. The sensation of the EM field interacting with his leg vibrated it in a funny manner. It felt weird. Other people, it just annoyed.

"Would you mind not doing that, Mr. Astin?" Selar complained. He seemed to be working on something, his hands moving over the Hazard suit, baring the power cell and reconfiguring it slightly. His hands play over the power output, the induction frequency and then linked it to an auxiliary battery that was still in his pocket. The Tellarites might have been good at emprisoning them, but they left them so much to toy with. It might cause them to be able to escape prematurely.

"The forcefields are well protected. The operator console is outside. We need to find a way to get through." Selar seemed serious in what he said. Weatherby let off an annoying grunt: "I've tried to overload my battery pack. I thought maybe a surge of large enough magnitude could disrupt the forcefield, but these prison cells are better secured than I thought they would be."

"You must save your suit's energy. It is logical to theorize that there is still a large dosage of radiation aboard this vessel," Selar replied once more.

"You're right, Chief," Ben Olsen said, while cradling his half-sedated sister. "The Tellarites had slightly swollen tear vessels, it was well visible, a well known side effect of many radiation inhibitors. They have something injected into them to help cope with it. Annie hasn't, I'm afraid."

His voice sounded rather afraid. Indeed, Annie was in danger. Her Hazard suit has been damaged from the attack and was leaking. That means the radiation could affect her body.

"She will start displaying symptoms in 4 hours. I don't know how long we can survive if not treated. Guess there's no point in asking."

"Keep attempting to neutralize the forcefields," Selar said clearly, and he started to remodulate the energy matrix of his suit. He had an idea, but it would take extensive effort.

Suddenly, a sound was conduced through the hull of the freighter. It sounded like it started low, but the vibration started o decrease, and the power output started to increase. It was like a car pulling up and spurted the interest of Lieutenant Junior Grade Weatherby.

"Do you guys hear this? I believe the Warp Coils are charging."

"Shit!"

"Peh'K", Torin grunted annoyedly. "We are prisoners of War! We must break out! This situation bears not a shred of honour!"

"Honor is not our concern at this moment, Crewman Torin. We must keep our logic and work our way out of here," Ensign Thei said, in order to try and keep the team together.

"Vulcan Logic… Peh! I'd rather stick a Bat'Leth in the EM-emitters!"

"You'd be the recipient of a large electric shock."

"So what, It's a good day to die!"

"Ka'Plah!"

"Shut up!" Ben Olsen groaned.

"Okay. You, You, You…" Weatherby pointed to Torin, then to K'Zin and Olsen. "Make silence now."

"This doesn't help us," Annie muttered weakly, also having noticed the argument that has started.

"See?" Ensign Olsen kept it up. "If a drugged, wounded person can understand that, then certainly two Klingons can."

Both Torin and K'Zin stand up in their both cells and kick against the forcefields aggressively, baring their white teeth and growling. "Insolent P'Tak! When we're free I'll bathe in your…"

"Shut Up!" Ben Olsen, Astin and Weatherby said exactly at the same moment.

A long silence went through the brig, in which everyone looked at anyone he could see, in opposing cells. About a minute later, the silence was broken, by the Vulcan Lieutenant Commander.

"Are you finished?" He raised his eyebrow, looking up from his remodulations.

…

"I'm hungry," Astin muttered shortly. "I was just on the way to the mess when we were called out. I haven't eaten in about 20 hours."

"Me neither my friend," Crewman Orton looked to the side out of his cell. "Too bad we didn't bring any, huh?"

Weatherby laughed. "I'll be sure to add 'an emergency supply of nutrients' to general away-mission equipment protocol."

"Yeah, that might be a good Idea," Ben Olson spoke, while holding his sister in a sitting up position. "In case the team is thrown in the brig of a seemingly harmless and highly damaged freighter once again in the future."

"Hey," Annie gathered the power to speak once more. "There's no need to become cynical."

USS Basileia, Bridge, October 9, 17.21 hours.

The Basileia is gliding very smoothly through the deep asteroids, once more retreating back to a slightly less blanketed area. It was a rather great challenge to limit the danger of navigation through an asteroid field. This cat and mouse game has taken its toll from the ship and its crew, but the problem was about to get worse.

"Are you sure, Sybok?" The captain looked over the readings and then back towards the static silhouette of her Chief Tactical officer.

"Positive, Captain. We managed to detect a brief surge from the freighter. We attempted to ran a few scans and despite the lowered resolution, we managed to ascertain that the surge was caused by the warp coils charging. They are aiming to go to warp."

"But, How? How is that possible, Sybok? Their warp core was breached, wasn't it? Their entire ship is saturated with radiolytic isotopes!"

"It appears we have missed that they have a secondary warp core." The stoic Vulcan raised his eyebrows and then, the Captain heard a sudden glitch to her comm-badge.

"Dominic Wozniak to Captain Hunter. Please come to Astrometrics as soon as possible."

She waited a moment before answering, thinking for a while.

"Spunktry, you have the Bridge, Nathan, come with me."

The captain walked towards the turbolift with a hefty stride, her eyes moving over the console, calling the turbolift to the bridge at once. It was there within five seconds. Ensign Todd Bowling replaced Nathan Cole at the sensor console and Nathan stood next to the Captain in the turbolift.

USS Basileia, Astrometrics, October 9, 17,32 hours

"Sorry we're a bit late, a hull breach nearby forced us to take an alterior route." The captain walked in and nodded towards the people who were there. Astrometrics was still the core of scientific technology on board this ship. The most sophisticated scanners and the most powerful computers were here. Tens of diagnostic consoles flaring with blue, green and yellow buttons, manned by a team of seven.

Lieutenant Commander Alberta Ellison was manning the special harmonic telemetry console. She was a blonde woman of about the Captain's age. Ensigns Carl Embry and Rachel LeJeune were both busy working on sensor resolution, while the rest of their Astrometrics shift was busy on keeping a close eye on the remaining vessel. Ensign Benjamin Eicher and Ensign Karl Hogan were working together on that, while Ensign Curtis Keck, plagued by a bleeding head wound, was still busy on trying to get communication online.

"Captain Hunter," LCMD Ellison spoke. "Glad you are here. Come, you have to see this. Something does not seem right."

"Go ahead, Miss Ellison."

The woman started punching buttons at an almost insane rate, large pockets of data translating into a visible three dimensional matrix figuring the asteroid field and everything in it. Due to poor sensor resolution, they had to do with a little less clarity.

"The freighter never impacted with an asteroid, ma'am. Something else caused the damage."

"Excuse me?" she asked rather surprised, but at the same moment, it clarified something for her. She turned around, her strong fingers curling around the console. She shook her head, laughing in a slightly weird manner.

"Something wrong, ma'am?" Ellison wondered out loud, walking towards her and holding her shoulder for a moment.

"Not at all." She calmly stopped laughing and stood upright. "I have told myself ever since I got close to this ship. This didn't smell right. This didn't feel right. This wasn't right at all, but that's just in retrospect."

"They're most certainly in on this, captain. My guesses are they attempted to seize your ship. Some Tellarites have an affinity for crime. Stealing ships by ambushing them is not strange to these people"

"But why here?" the captain wondered slightly, she raised her eyebrow and rubbed her chin. A headache she hadn't felt for quite some time started to surface again, the prospect of yet another brain-breaker wasn't welcomed at all. Her clothing, now ragged by last hour's happenings, was a bit filthy.

"Think about it captain. If you were a Tellarite freighter and wanted to have a powerful warship, you would set up ambush on a place where you have much chance of victory. In a dense minefield like this, it's unlikely for a ship to be able to make good time. The USS Basileia is a rather exceptional craft on that matter. Very maneuverable. If this were a Galaxy class starship, we would probably not have survived till now."

"So you want to say that they put up ambush here, for us?" Jan asked, not liking the sound of this.

"That is possible, but it's more likely that we happened to be the first to respond to their signal. We are on the border of Federation space, the number of vessels patrolling here is not large. I would guess this is a coincidental mishap."

"I don't believe in coincidence, Miss Ellison. I can't help but believe that this happened for a reason. I can't think of any, though." Captain Hunter replied.

"Neither can I, ma'am. It's a good chance that this ambush was not meant for us explicitly." The LCMD fiddled her nose slightly and tapped some more buttons, bringing up yet another schematic. "It was a very clever setup, captain. Look here." She pointed towards the screen now, a vision of the freighter and the space around it. It also depicted the borders of the radiation cloud.

"I have been able to point out that the warp core of this craft has been purposefully sabotaged. They have faked a warp core breach, Captain."

"I'll be damned." She turned in closer and walked towards the screen, taking up the details with narrowed eyes.

"That's not all, ma'am. The radiation cloud expands with a speed of several kilometer per second, this speed quickly decaying on an exponential level. The cloud is 550 million kilometers across, encompassing the entire asteroid field. It has been here for two weeks. They have been waiting for a long, long time, captain."

"And you think it's not the least bit strange that not a single Federation vessel has responded to hails, sooner?"

"Not really, ma'am. They have deliberately allowed the radiation cloud to expand to this size, because it would give them the advantage. Thanks to that radiation, we had to lower our shields to transport inside. Thanks to that radiation, our scanners were saturated and couldn't pick up the ambush. It was the perfect recipe of getting through a Starship's shields. The distress call was sent only 1 day ago. This ambush was well thought up, Captain. Very well thought up. You know better then me that they wouldn't stand a chance against this vessel under normal circumstances. They depended on Federation policy, that distress calls must be answered when even remotely possible."

The captain listened through all this time, but she still wasn't convinced of the Lieutenant Commander's theory. "Nice thoughts. I'm not completely convinced about it though."

"Well, whether you believe it or not, I did find out that the ship has two warp cores. It can propel itself accordingly with only one. It's charging up its coils as we speak. Captain, if we let her go to warp, there's no telling whether we could follow them. Engineering is swallowed in repairs, countless of systems are fluctuating and we don't know the top speed of that vessel. Because of the loss of our main deflector, our speed will be limited too, I have heard. I advise that we take action immediately, that we board the freighter and return our men before the ship eludes our grasp."

"Good work, Miss Ellison. Captain to Bridge…" She spoke, the last through her comm-badge.

USS Basileia, Bridge, 17.44 hours

"Spunktry here. What's the…"

"The freighter, Number One. Intercept it. Immediately, before it goes to warp."

"Excuse me, Captain?" He did not understand completely.

"Just do as I say, Gidean. ASAP!"

As they speak, suddenly, something seems to come out of nothing. A strange greenish glowing projectile fired out of the torpedo tube of the larger alien craft, sailing through the vacuum of space to intercept the USS Basileia. It appeared to have survived the destruction of the asteroid. As the projectile left its carrier, the ship once more visualized in a rather graphical display.

"SHIELDS!" Spunktry yelled, and Ensign Bowling immediately responded by diverting what power he could to the aft shielding. Still, the power of impact was extreme, the entire ship being subject to one massive tremor as the projectile ate away at the shields and the hull.. Sybok was thrown against his console and lost his footing, pulling himself up on his station once more and painfully gritting his teeth. A burnmark was lodged on his face, as it appeared that an energy spark from the fluctuating energy grid singed the side of his face.

"Our shields are down to 5 percent. It was a maximum yield Tri-Cobalt Device. Both aft launchers are off line," Sybok uttered with raised voice, to allow the sound of his speech overcome the rumbling of the vessel's complaining hull.

"Two additional breaches on deck 13 and 15."

Suddenly, the bridge door opens, Captain Jan Hunter stepping out of the turbolift, a blooding gash on her forehead. "What the hell was that last one?"

"A tri-cobalt device, ma'am. Not standard issue. I think this one was made specifically to disable us. Aft launchers defecting. Shields nearly down."

"Damn deflector dish!"

"Phaser strips down to 45 percent, ma'am." Sybok made clear.

"Concentrated pattern, combination Picard Omicron Zeta. Have quantums ready. Do you think you can pull that off once more, Miss Cole?"

"Pull what off, Captain?" she asked wondering

"Turning around with forward kinetics?" Captain Hunter asked with a powerful voice. She used her hands to rub the wound. She licks the blood of her finger.

"I guess so, ma'am."

"Try and give me a full 180! Ensign Bowling, inertial dampers to full, all available auxiliary power to structural integrity!"

Two more photon torpedoes impact with the Basileia, rocking the ship back and forth slightly.. The aft shielding was now completely down.. "All remaining shields to full… Engage!"

Then suddenly, the Basileia would show what she was made of yet once again. The over half a kilometer long vessel would display the intence maneuverability it had by firing up a propulsor beneath the right half of her saucer and one at the back of the ship, left. With a massive torque, it started to turn out of its trajectory, the impulse rods on a fraction of their power to allow for the kinetic energy to wear through. While flying dead ahead, the ship managed to turn around a complete one hundred and eighty degrees, the torque however causing many microfractures at the poorly shielded hull. Countless of relais belched, several more blew. The bridge was momentarily coated in a rain of sparks.

"Fire away!" the Captain yelled, this absurd maneuver taking the enemy vessel completely by surprise. With several men pressing several buttons, all five faser strips started to work at the top of their power, rerouting power to the front and then suddenly discharging with all the power they had left, four quantum torpedoes were shot out of the left front ventral torpedo bay, all of which impacted with the front of the ship. One targeted the weapons, two targeted shield emitters and the fourth slammed into an impulse manifold, the five phasers combining their force, triangulating on one point on the enemy ship's hull.

Several explosions completely encompass the front of the vessel, the barrage it just received being more than it could handle. It almost broke in two, but just barely remained together. Displaying massive hull breaches, spanning certainly 7 of their decks, it seemed almost completely destroyed

"They are disabled, captain."

"Good, Sybok, Lieutenant Helmsman Cole, ease us down." As she said that, she eased herself down in the Captain's chair. She breathed in and then blew out a powerful breath. Balling up her cheeks rather annoyedly, she popped her vertebrae back in place audibly.

"I'm getting too old for this shit." She grunted and looked to the side. "Everyone here alright?" She received nods from everyone, seemingly the bridge was spared from the damage. Several microfractures plagued the hull here and there, but it was nothing compared to some other decks.

"Remind me to never lower my shields again close to a derelict ship."

"I'll note it in my log, Jan." Spunktry said with a slight grin.

Without a warning, the impulse rods of the Tellarite freighter started flaring up, suddenly propelling it faster and faster. It was ready to go to warp. The captain widened her eyes and stepped up, standing firm and upright.

"Intercept… Quantum torpedoes. Target their engines. Fire!"

The orders come in at an alarming rate, but everybody does what he or she is supposed to do. Iris Cole pilots the Basileia towards the freighter moving off. A large energy surge moved through its engines, and as Sybok acknowledged his order to fire two quantum torpedoes, the warp rods were readied. The quantum torpedoes exit the last operative torpedo tube, on their way towards the craft ahead, quickly covering the 400 kilometer distance that was still between them.

The Tellarite freighter powerfully pulled up, the quantum torpedoes following suit to keep by, just a few seconds before impact, a sudden rise of power would emit two flashes of light at the freighters warp rods. A warp field was created, the craft elongating and suddenly bursting off towards the spatial horizon. It disappeared from sight without a single twinkle of light. A masked warp field. The quantum torpedoes miss their target and keep flailing around in the same direction destined to hit nothing anymore again. Captain Hunter slammed her fist down on the console. "Shit!"

"According to sensors, the freighter moved off with warp 4.8. If I read their output correctly, they can't go much faster with that one core."

"Pursuit course, now!" the captain spat out, but then was mired by the damage that plagued her ship.

"We can't, Jan. Our warp core is still not operational."

She sunk down on her seat, in a long silence, only after a few minutes, she broke it. "Hold position here and try to accelerate our repair process."

USS Basileia, October 10, 01.05 hours

Captain's Log: October 10, 2386. Over ten hours ago now, The Basileia received a distress call from a derelict Tellarite freighter, claiming to have been stranded in an asteroid field. We responded to this distress call and when we arrived on the site, it seemed that large amounts of radiation have leaked into space, interfering with communications, sensors and transporters. We ascertained that the shuttlecrafts were unable to sustain a stable engine output in this radiation as well and we had to drop shields in order to attempt a beam in. As soon as our shields dropped, we were ambushed by four enemy vessels that appeared to have an ingenious cloaking barrier.

Their first attack destroyed our deflector before we managed to raise our shields again. What followed was best described as a long lasting game of cat and mouse between the asteroids. The Basileia sustained heavy damage to propulsion, the warp systems and torpedo launchers. We are pratically running on auxiliary energy now, but that is not the worst. 13 members of my crew are confirmed dead. One person is still unaccounted for, but I think it is safe to assume that this person also passed away.

The Tellarite freighter that was acting to be stranded suddenly revealed to have a second warp core. They have successfully escaped from us and the entire Alpha Hazard Team is still aboard. I hope they are still all right. Many of these men aboard that freighter are still my boys. I will do anything I can to rescue them, but my ship isn't as determined as I am. Repairs were estimated to take over 30 hours and our communications array is almost completely demolished, but getting my crewmen back is now my top priority.

I have had multiple conversations with my science and intelligence staffs. They believe that the ambush might be set to obtain a powerful 'warship', as many Tellarite crime syndicates are familiar to these actions. They told me the fact that it was my ship that fell for this ambush was merely fortuitous. I however can't believe this theory. I don't know what else can be the case, but it just does not feel right. My nose, my intuition, my instinct, they have never failed me before. What did fail yesterday was my expertise. Never in my career as a special op or a star ship crewmember has a situation under my responsibility gone this haywire. I believe I have acted ineptly, many positive criticism not withstanding. Maybe age is creeping up to me.

Captains Log: Supplemental

I cannot sleep. I haven't slept in a long time already. Cold beverages keep me awake. I feel like someone with a concussion; I am death tired, but it feels as if I'm not allowed to fall asleep. As if sleeping would cause death or worse, other people's death. Repairs are coming on the way quite well. Due to my crew's outstanding performance, believed is that we will be able to go to warp within the next 12 hours. Then we can try and find my boys.

USS Basileia, Mess Hall, October 10, 8.40 hours

The captain came walking into the Mess. Her face was distraught with powerful doubts, fatigue and wonder. She rubbed her eyes, trying to focus them. Maybe yet another coca cola will help. Standing up as soon as she wanted to go and sit down once more, she walked towards the replicator with a quick stride. She tilted her head to the side and tapped it.

"Coca cola, icy cold." That was all she said, but nothing happened, aside from a slight pattern of bleeps emanating from the wall mounted device.

"The replicators are malfunctioning as well, ma'am." She blinked as she looked towards where the voice came from. It was the Chef.

"…but luckily, for you I have a bottle right here. Nice and icy cold."

"My hero." She walked towards him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"If I would ask for a ship wide damage report and go look at the list of systems that are malfunctioning, I think I'll not be done reading before dinner. This asteroid field and my failure inside of it start to make me crazy."

"If I may, Captain?" Chef asked and pointed at the seat at Jan Hunter's table. She nodded with raised eyebrows. She surely didn't mind a little company.

"I think you did very well, ma'am. Your sound judgement saved our lives." Chef started

"I'm sorry, but I think at least thirteen people would disagree with that. No, wait, twenty-two. Don't forget Alpha team, trapped on that Tellarite ship. We lost people today, Chef. If I didn't respond to the distress call, twenty-two or more people would be either alive and/or here, let alone this ship would be still fully functional. We would have been 10 lightyears closer to Romulus."

"That may be true, Captain, but you did the right thing. Starfleet is supposed to help when it can. Isn't that why the Federation is made? A supportive organ of leadership?"

"I guess you're right, Chef, but as captain of a starship, I am responsible for every life lost under my command. Every death causes me pain, though a death that I feel could so easy be avoided is truly a black mark on my record."

The captain looked out in front of herself and then turned her gaze over the mess hall. Many people were there, walking in and out, taking a quick breakfast, then going to their stations. The entire ship was completely alert.

"I have faith in you, Cap'n. Go get our maties back."

She slightly smiled and nodded. "I will, Herbert".

Though everybody calls the Chef simply Chef, his real name was Herbert Hartnett. Like the stereotypic chef, he was corpulent and had a rather big mustache. If there was anyone deserving of the term 'jolly' it would be him. Chef Hartnett waved the captain a goodbye, as she moved through the door, which slid open to make way for her form.

USS Basileia, Engineering, 08.42 hours

The house of gremlins, is what Dick Hardy called it once. Engineering. Large, circular, two decks high and filled with tumult. There were at least twenty people inside, a fairly large amount of people. Every console inside was manned and several Jeffries' Tubes were splayed open by force, because a plasma discharge had molten them shut. Repairs took on, but they were very heavy on the body. Engineers worked double shifts and they worked hard. The work was physically demanding and most of them skipped one or two meals a day to meet the high requirements. Dick Hardy, who finally conquered even the final symptoms of his annoying belly troubles, has been awake for many hours, ignoring the advice he had given to someone two days ago himself. To get some sleep. To 'get some shuteye, damnit'.

Hardy had become somewhat of a slavemaster, demanding long hours, demanding maximum efforts, but they also knew that when things were all right again, Hardy was known to throw parties. On occasion, Captain Hunter approved of the Engineering bay to be turned into a 'raving hall'. Of course, these little outbound activities were not noted in her logs, or anyone else's for that matter. Tactical Officer Sybok has complained several times, but has been persuaded by the Captain to show some leniency.

Today, there was yet another rave going on. Whatever it was, it was a madhouse. Many voices raised and interrupted one another and Dick Hardy, blessed with a rather loud voice, was king of the engineroom.

"Injector assemblies are back on full! You two, go get two more anti-matter injectors. You, Bonehead! Plasma conduits for Deck 12 and 13!" And yes, fifteen more engineering crewmembers came piling in for orders. Luckily, there was plenty to do for everyone, as throughout the ship, systems needed to be repaired or replaced. Getting warp back online is a top priority.

A signal was heard. "Captain Hunter to Engineering."

"Yes captain, Hardy here. What's the matter?"

"Is there any way to strip the main deflector to be operational again? Can something else momentarily function as a disk?"

The Lieutenant Commander shook his head. "I'm sorry, that's not possible. The deflector dish was an integrated system part. It was a security precaution to make sure it could not be substituted."

"Thank god for security precaution, god DAMNIT." The Captain wasn't really happy, or so it seemed by the sound of her voice.

"Why does security precaution outweigh Captain's prerogative?"

A short silence plagued the comm.

"I'm sorry captain. We will have to make do with the deflector we have."

"Well, how fast will we be able to go with only our dorsal deflector?" the Captain asked while rubbing the side of her head. She was on the way to the bridge, which isn't quite easy when having to circumvent places that are off-limits due to repairs.

"I guess we'll stick at Warp 5.6, maybe I can give you 6, that depends on how its conductance is. We will have to find out. The dorsal deflector took a small hit too."

…

"See what you can do."

USS Basileia, Bridge, 9.03 hours

The door to the bridge opened, the sound of pressure accompanying the opening doors.

"Why the hell is atmospheric pressure down by ten percent?" Jan Hunter asked slightly snidely.

"We have still problems with our lifesupport. The atmosphere is stable, but the pressure moves back and forth around about 88 kilopascals. The hull breaches cost us quite some air."

"Well, then increase synthesis. The breaches are sealed now, right?"

"Barely." Sybok gazed upon the captain and raised his eyebrow.

"There are plenty of other systems still not operable."

The captain suddenly sunk in her chair, grunting while rolling her eyes. "Tell me about it my friend, I took twenty minutes for me to actually get here. I waited in line for the only two toilets that were still operational on deck 10 and 11. My sonic shower did not work. The replicator in my quarters gave me my glass of coca cola turned inside out somehow and I spent 60 meters floating through Corridor 7-C on deck 5 becauce the gravity playing was not operational. According to Hardy, it is all because of an imbalance in the power grid. We are so fortunate the repair of our primary systems doesn't take longer than 2 days."

"I see what you mean, Captain" Sybok remains quiet further and started to work his hands over the console, reconfiguring the torpedo arrays while the astronaut crew had pulled the debris from the torpedo launchers and the phaser strips.

"Captain, the weapons will take approximately a week to get back to full. For the deflector, we will have to rendez vous with a star ship or a station. We can synthesize most parts for a new deflector dish, but the harmonic receivers are made of Gadrinium alloys. They are not resequenseable with our engineering replicators." Bowling indicated..

"Good, keep up the work. I will be in my readyroom if you need me. Oh, and Mr. Gosa, send forth the … Ambassador, will you. I wish to speak to her at 10.00 hours."

"Aye aye ma'am," the Wadi male replied and started to open a channel towards her quarters.

USS Basileia, Captain's Ready Room, October 10.00 hours.

The door to the Captain's ready room started to emit the diatonic sound. The Starfleet doorbell rang through Jan Hunter's mind, just as she was in the middle of reviewing logs, looking at scans on a data pad. She tilted her head slightly, tapping the replicator on the wall beside her. "Coca cola, icy cold, not inside out this time."

The replicator seemed to work accordingly, as a cylinder shaped glass with the black substance materialized on top of the matter/energy resequencer.

"Come in." she mildly spoke.

She doesn't know how Ambassador Sela managed to keep the beauty in her wardrobe, but she managed to do all right. She was cleaner than the rest, more untouched by the preceding events.

"You wanted to talk with me, Captain?" the Ambassador asked.

"Yes, that's right. I do." A heavy silence befell the room. Both remained quiet for a moment, as the captain sought through her mind for things to say. The first thing that entered her mind: "Can I get you anything? This replicator is operational again."

"Oh, tea, please," Sela smiled slightly. The Captain's wiry, strong fingers tapped the wall mounted replicator once more, to enter the request. "Romulan amber tea, hot."

The replicator started to make a whirring sound, the atoms resequencing to the shape of a black bowl, filled with a strong herbal tea. She moved her hand towards it, grabbing the bowl and placed it on the table, in front of Ambassador Sela. "Please, take a seat." Her face was unusually highstrung and stoic. It was probable that the look on her face caused the unpleasant silence to last even longer. Sela gracefully moved her hands to hold onto the bowl. She brought it to her lips and took a drink, then, she put it back down where it stood.

"I regret what happened to your crewmembers yesterday." She tried to break the tension by starting to speak, but her words did not fall right with the Captain. She had been under a lot of stress and it might have caused her to loose a little bit of her tact.

"Regret?" She let out a rather unpleasant grunt and moved her eyes towards the data pad she was working on. Ten seconds, she was cataloguing the database and then looked back up.

"Why would you regret it?"

"With all due respect, captain, but I too value lives very highly."

She suddenly stood up, Sela slightly shocked back at the sudden movement.. "No, Ambassador. I meant, why would you regret it? You haven't got anything to do with what happened? Do you?"

"Excuse me captain, but that's a bit out of line." Sela was slightly appalled by the proceedings of the ongoing conversation.

"Of course not. Look, I'm sorry for what happened, but I don't have to take this!"

"Neither have I, ambassador." Her hand goes towards the data pad again. She tosses it over the smooth table top, letting it slide to a halt in front of the Romulan's face.

"There you see the specs of the two vessels that opened fire on my ship. At the very moment of our dropping our shields to transport through the radiation, they opened fire on us, knocked out our deflector," a rather angry Captain said.

"What does that have to do with me, Captain?" the Ambassador spoke, her voice raised.

Another silence befell the room in which both the participants of the conversation looked at one another.

The Captain's voice was heard once more. "They had very advanced cloaking systems. Cloaking systems that were nigh undetectable. That's part of why they were able to ambush us. Now, there is only one race within two thousand lightyears of here that I know has cloaking technology of this stature…"

The Captain did not have to finish her sentence. She tapped the rim of her table and watched Sela very closely.

"Romulans," the Ambassador says.

"So, Ambassador, you may see why I am so suspicious of this situation right now. My science directorate and the intelligence crew aboard this ship thought that this ambush was a mere coincidence, but I don't. I've felt weird about this since we were in eye contact..."

"The Romulans have nothing to do with Tellarites, Captain Hunter. I doubt the Star Empire has much to do with this ambush. There are other races with the ability to cloak their ships. Klingons, Bajorans, also you Humans."

"Human and Klingon cloaking technology is nowhere near perfect. If we want to find something cloaked, we find it… unless it's Romulan, then it becomes a challenge. Even with impaired sensors, we would have detected tachyon emission from those cloaks if they were Human or Klingon or Bajoran or whatever."

"Maybe they have gotten hold of Romulan cloaking technology, Captain, you can hold our species accountable based on a mere assump…"

"I'm not!" she interrupted the Ambassador with quite a raise of voice. She was no longer sitting but instead strode back and forth in front of her window, watching asteroids zoom by as they flew in low impulse.

"What I am assuming is that you might… MIGHT… know something, Mrs. Sela, and if you do… IF … you do, I want to know right now." The Captain's sound of voice was very determined.

"All I know is what you heard, captain. The Romulans want us to travel to their homeworld because of a seemingly important matter." The ambassador shifted her weight on the chair. She was used to lower chairs.

"Ok, one more question. Have you received transmissions from Romulus?" A short silence plagued the room once more.

"No, I haven't. Was this all?"

"Yes, this was all. Thanks for your time, Ambassador," she reluctantly said.

The static looking woman stoicly stood up and handled her robes, moving to walk out. As the automatic door made way for her figure, she stood still for a moment and looked back towards Jan, who was still wearing out the gravity plating by walking back and forth.

"You've done well yesterday. I thank you."

The Romulan Ambassador then left, the door closing with the sound of a puff, leaving the captain alone in her ready room.

"Don't mention it."

USS Basileia, October 11, 12.20 hours

Captain's log, October 11, 2386. It has taken a few hours longer than anticipated, but the warp reactor is finally back online. Primary systems have been restored to their normal capacity, the nerves of the crew are rattled. I can't say I blame them. The thought of being able to set in pursuit and retrieve my missing crewmembers is resupplying me with vigor.

Captain's personal log: I finally have been able to sleep well again. Ironic it might be that it is on a time like this. Maybe it was the fatigue that finally overcame me, but I feel a lot better now things are looking slightly up again. I fear for my crewmates, but I know some of them from back in my commando days and if anyone can take care of oneself, it's them. Here we go into a new day, attempting to keep our faith in those whom we know and trust.

Captain Jan Hunter appeared on the bridge an hour overdue, but since she hadn't slept in very long, even Sybok didn't wake her from those few hours she did pass in. For the first in these last few days, she had been tending to her appearance somewhat again. Her sonic shower was operating again, when she woke up and her clothing was laundered.

There she stood, as if before the Ganesians again, her boots polished and her uniform tightly around her figure.

"Status report." She looked over her shoulder towards Sybok and Spunktry. Commander Sybok tapped his diagnostic console as she started to sit down.

"Most of the internal systems are back to normal, life support, replicators and sanitary systems are back on check. The Warp Reactor is ready for us to go to warp," Sybok answered, a slightly less stoic and grim look on his face, though still not overly emotional.

"Excellent." She smiled again, slightly, and made eye contact with Spunktry. "Don't worry Gidean. We're going to get our boys back."

"I never doubted it, captain," he smiled, invigorated by rise of the Basileia.

"Bridge to engineering, are you ready for Warp speed?" the Captain asked through the comm.

"As ready as we'll ever be, Captain! We're locked and loaded, ready to shovel shit wherever it may fall!" Hardy seemed rather pleased as well.

"All right. Match the Tellarite Freighter's traveling vector and go in pursuit. Maximum warp!"

Only a moment later it was that the impulse engines started to burst out, propelling the craft to optimal for entering Warp. As of a sudden, a dark bluish twinkling path of degrading energy particles is left behind by each nacelle as the USS Basileia shot towards the spatial horizon with Warp 5.6. Silence returned to the asteroid field, the two ships that were merely disabled and not destroyed were still attempting repairs.

Tellarite Freighter, Brig, October 10, 12.25 hours

It's been 38 hours time since the boarding of the freighter, the captives enjoying an ample meal, given to them by their captors. A simple bowl of proteins, sticky goo that didn't seem a delicacy at all, but had plenty of nutritional value. They needed to eat well, for whatever purpose they were being held. At the moment, there were no complaints. Hopes weren't exactly high in this situation, and Annie Olsen began to show symptoms of Radiation sickness.

Several pleads for inoculations against the radiation have been rejected by the Tellarites, to preserve the stocks for their own people.

"How are the rest of you holding up," Ben Olsen said, just like before.

"Oh quit it, you know how we feel," Orton replied rather snidely

"Just asking, just asking. Damn cold. The least thing they can do is turn up the heat. It's not like we're going anywhere more if it would be warmer. It's like-5 degrees Centigrade in here" Ben turned to his sister, whose sedative had worn off, but whose beginning radiation sickness had taken its toll. She had on two occasions refused to take Ben's offer of switching Hazard suits, but that's what you get when you have two people who were both protective of one another.

"Damn cold." Torin complained loudly. "Klingons aren't made to sustain cold. We're worse at handling cold than Humans."

Weatherby suddenly raised his eyebrow and looked to the side, not having expected to hear that from the mouth of one of the most tenacious Klingons he'd ever learned to know. "I thought that were Cardassians."

"They just complain about it more," he replied irritably, then a long silence befell them all…

In his cell on the foremost left side of the brig, Selar was still busy on reconfiguring his energy cell. It had been so long already, and after two between attempts, he remained unsuccessful.

"Won't you stop that, Selar? You tried it more than once already," a pessimistic, disgruntled Fred Astin murmured.

"It would not be logical to stop, Mr. Astin. As long as there is a chance of success, it is logical to continue trying. Plus, I think I am getting close to match the EM frequency of these forcefields," he paused for a short moment and then looked about, towards Astin and Weatherby who he could see from his cell…

"Have faith, gentlemen. The captain will not give us up yet. She is bound to come look for the nine of us."

"Well, I hope she will be quick, Selar, look at how Annie's doing. She won't last another two days."

Weatherby nodded, mostly to himself. He started thinking back to his experience in the commando forces. The special ops on the Rigellian moon. Jan Hunter never left a single man behind, even against unprecedented odds. She would not leave until she was perfectly sure she had tried every possible thing to get her team back.

"The Captain will not let us down. Let's eat this crap. She doesn't give up on us, so se can't give up on ourselves." Weatherby looked at it and started to eat it, ignoring the foul protein taste

"Tak'rah! You're right, softskin." K'Zin uttered.

A more general, calmer conversation took the place of the resonating insults flying to and fro, the humans and the klingons stopped raising their voices and starting to talk about mundane things. The entire freighter was silent, even the concealed warp engine. A barely detectable warp signature sailing behind the exhaust ports as the ship shoots away into the far depths of space.

Somewhere, some time...

An almost unnaturally thick haze covers the massive stretches of forest, as the soldiers, secret and silent as death itself, wade through the cold, damp marshlands. Having their feet stuck in the hydrogen sulfide bogs, they have to pull them out constantly, the hardship and the smudge making sounds of viscous glue being ranted apart. Equipped with their normal tools of death and destruction, they blend in perfectly, not even the nocturnal creatures of the Venati death bogs, beasts with a look so abyssal one would only expect them to appear in nightmares and the horror films of old, would be stirred into noticing them. Supplied with high grain filtering face masks to protect them from the toxic damp that originates from the ground, they slightly resemble a Breen commando, if not for the fact that they were a lot more sleek, and did not need fridge sized apparatuses to keep them to their normal temperature of habit.

The footsteps increase as the heart rate of the soldiers does. It was night and it was cold, after four days of tailing a patrol into the heart of unhampered nature, the hopes were high that their base camp was all too nearby. Through the damp fog, the only advantage the black commandos had were additions to these aforementioned masks, giving them increased perception through the thick fog. Who said that technology couldn't win a war? Like ghosts, they disappear into the nightmarish marshland, stalking their prey, until suddenly a large, black structure emerged from the fog filled horizon. Between the giant trees of Venati IV's moon, singed with the stench of deadly natural toxins, a compound arose. It was large, but it could be perfectly hidden within the crevices of the sun blocking blanket of leaves put up by the massive arboreal growth. A large, stomped pyramid shaped compound, overgrown by flora for the very reason of camouflage, a process that would have taken countless of years without a doubt.

The hand of the lead soldier moved upwards, signaling the group the orders. Though the fog still impaired vision, the intentions were clear. Three fingers up, the arm coming down towards the right, around the compound. Two fingers. To the side. One finger, then a thumb towards the chest. Come with me. The group started to unfold and teem with activity, activity thus far unnoticed by the enemy. A grunt escaped the lips of the strange, dark soldier as they leant up against the wall of the compound. They had scanners, no doubt, but the suits seemed to be designed to absorb the waves that carry forth their telemetry. Another set of gestures, a hand that seemed to count down, by each time moving one of the fingers down from stretched out position. Five, four, three…

The entire base suddenly turned completely empty, a slight belch in their security routines, as shifts rotated. When the enemy is settled on a world they are not accustomed to, always use their habits to an advantage; The Bazaeans have a 14 hour day time, whereas this world takes 37 hours. Dealing long shifts and being drasticly undermanned, discipline is destined to ware thin.

Two, one. A hand moving down towards the entrance, in a slight arc, meant to indicate go. And go, they did, the two soldiers walking silently as the grave beside the black, wall, behind the back of an enemy guard soldier that was more interested in looking at his clock and see the last minute go by than guarding the base from any possible form of intrusion; a mistake that will cost him his life. A short gurgle resonated, but seemed to bounce to death against the dense fog, making it distort into a banshee-esque reverberation of spooky noises. Sinking into a corpse position, the body huddled against the wall, face down into the toxic mud.

The lead soldier suddenly grasped in the pack on his back, retrieving a modified tricorder, which he attached to the security grid with a black wire. Starting to input a fractal decryption, within two seconds, an almost infinite amount of combinations was evaluated, causing relais after relais, diode after diode, to switch about and render the system completely inert. An EMP, but then on a nanoscopic scale. The dark door shoved open, both halves outward, and resulting into two guards looking around a little bit dazed that found themselves being disabled by a shot to the chest. Not even granted the time to say anything or to make a sound for that matter, they drop to the ground, turning motionless, after which the assailants infiltrate deeper into the base. Only shortly after, the rest of the team assembled in an elevator room at the side of the main corridor, each time just having entered before yet another guard walked past. The seven men were stocked into the freight lift, turning about. The first one to put off the mask was a woman with dark hair and a muscular build. It was Jan Hunter.

"Sergeant Olsen."

A well shaped man, with a short beard, upped his mask.

"Present and fully functional."

"Gidean?" Jan continued

"I'm allright."

"Dawson and Orton."

"We're a-ok, sir."

"Perry, James, Hicks?"

"Never better, ma'am."

"Excellent. Now let us find our boy."

On a poorly lit basement level, the doors suddenly flung open, in regard of keeping the silence up. A slight puff of escaping air as the door was fully opened. The group of eight started to silently snake through the maze of corridors, guided onwards by their sensors. As the intelligence officers stationed in the compound were still busy trying to establish an understanding of the problem that had lodged itself deep inside their systems, the enemy had already protruded to the heart of the base. Perry, who held the most powerful scanner, looked on it and tapped the screen to put up a scrematic..

"The prison cells are adjacent to corridor 5-Z."

"Let's go."

Their feet softly rattled against the ground, as they slid past corridors, they carefully made sure they were unnoticed.

"Most of enemy personnel is diverted to sort out the problem in the computer system. We have an optimal coverage now."

"Excellent work, Gidean."

After a few more moments, the group arrives at one of the holding pens, their gaze shooting around as if to ascertain the placement of a console.

"There, sir, behind that plate," Olsen pointed out, and with a calm stride he went to stand in front of it. Jan Hunters eyes fall on him and she narrowed them slightly, in the meanwhile issuing gestured orders to James and Hicks to take post at the entrance of this holding pen area. Luckily, there were two.

"Olsen. Put up a prisoner manifest and find Weatherby. The ground layers of this world distort biosign readings."

"I'm working on it, sir. A moment."

His hands rattled over the keys of the console, trying to circumvent the corrosion to the internal system they have caused to find their way as deep in as they are, until suddenly, Olsen turned back towards Hunter and nodded.

"Bull's Eye." His voice came as a hammerstrike, yet as the two enemies that were left to guard the pen were disabled, it was wasted to nothing but air. The resonating sound of their voices did not travel far enough, nor did it make a difference at this point. The interference they have induced to the enemy computer system has caused a low grade alert to have activated, something like all hands to battle stations, but then different.

"I have him, he's in D-Block. They threw him in their isolation section."

"Cruddy bastards. Let's get him," Hicks uttered and started running. His impulsive action had sprouted a confused and slightly hautaine look from three of his companions. A short, gloomy silence befell the eight commandos.

"It's that way," Astin muttered with a suppressed humorous tone in his voice. At that, six of them started to make way for the intended block. The air in this deep level was slightly rotten, polluted with a tiny amount of hydrogen sulfide. It was not enough to be toxic, but it stunk to high heavens. It was as if twenty people farted in that one corridor or even more. The rotten stench of bad eggs clinging to the very bowels of the holding pen. Luckily, they did not have to go far.

D-Block

A door was hoisted up with the sound of a garage door retracting into the ceiling cavity, making room for them to enter. It was not by far as large, but noticeable was the fact that every cell had a door that was completely solid. No forcefield (or at least no exterior forcefield) was put up to protect the misbehaving prisoners from the hardships of attempted escape, there only was a thick duritanium door before each – no doubt very small – insulation cell. The stench no longer taking its effect upon Jan Hunter's nose – when residing in a smelly environment, after a while each notice of putrid stench will have pulled to the farthest recesses of one's mind – she could completely concentrate on what she came here to do.

"Cell 12, sir."

Separating herself from the group to walk towards the intended door, she did not hesitate for a single second but instantly shoved up the plate that covered the control console to the one door she stood in front of. Tapping several of the lighting panes, the door suddenly opened, slowly, but certainly, making way for a very dark interior. The cell was larger then expected and it even has a chair, which was very unusual for an isolation cell. As the door lifted upwards, just as the blast door that granted access to the entire station, the silhouette of the man inside was slowly appearing. First, the feet came, being the first true indication that the man inside was the man they set out to retrieve. Starfleet military issue.

The shadows lifted further and started to show slightly worn pants, a few large scratches here and there, through which injured skin was shown, Hunter's eyes narrowing upon the figure that slowly waxed to completion. The abdominal area was still pretty much in one piece. The black sweater like cloth had not been subject to damage, because of the protective gear he wore throughout the mission, however, when the neck became visible, Jan's hand traveled to her mouth and her eyes widened.

The head. The head. Light was cast upon a totally shriveled up and blackened face, the skin hanging to the skeleton like a dried prume, greenish saliva dripping off the side of a hanging lower lip that more closely resembled the lip a pit bull terrier than a human being's. She jolted back, but kept staring at the gruesome spectacle, maggots squirming inside of hollow eye sockets, the sclera long since having rotten away, some of the disgusting creatures seeking relish inside of the nostrils. All of a sudden, she turned around, the image of a dead companion was enough to freak out even the most battle hardened officer. She snapped her head back towards her team, and then stood still completely, as if looking into a negative mirror or a well of nightmare.

The lights were seemingly deactivated, making place for another set of illuminatory strips. A reddish glow, very dim, filled the corridor, enough to see what else has mutated beyond the boundaries of realism. The seven other members of her team that took along on the rescue had changed. They were no longer recognizable, their faces were gone. Not only that, but seemingly, they were replaced by dark robed, semi-armored humanoids, faceless humanoids. Whether they had real faces and they were hidden in the darkness or no faces at all wasn't clear… She had landed into a netherworld. A linear sequence of scares that was about to reach its pinnacle.

They all raised their weapon, searing beams on their highest phaser setting, as the Captain had just enough perception left to be able to feel it. Feel what it was like to melt, limb by limb, until her entire body was completely vaporized and all turned forever black.

USS Basileia, Captain's Quarters, October 11, 1.31 hours

Captain Jan Hunter of the USS Basileia suddenly flashed, threw off her blanket and sat up powerfully, bordering to anxiety. Her heart rate and respiration had risen to such high standards that even for a woman of her physical level of fitness, it was hazardous. She took her time to calm down, moving to her feet and look about, making sure that she was safe. She supported herself with a hand to the wall and looked up for a moment, trying to slow her heart rate by holding her breath momentarily. Taking the process of factorizing oxygen off line for a moment, sending smaller pulses of blood for the organ that in this moment of anxiety claimed the predominant amount of her life sustaining juices.

"Computer Lights. Level 2."

Suddenly, the illumination of the Captain's personal quarters started to kick in, brightening the room to a mild, rather dim level. It was only a few factors higher than candlelight, obviously not programmed to be used for reading of working a data pad. She held her hand to her chest, fiddling the rim of her pyjamas. She then suddenly snapped her head behind her, trying to make sure these horrid, almost medieval figures weren't haunting her while awake as well. Luckily, her mind wasn't strong enough to project the images of her fear. Yes, lucky her. The constraints of her facial musculature suddenly turned rigid, an angered look on her face, maybe caused by her powerlessness to alleviate the anxiety that steamed through her body.

"Captain Hunter to Sickbay…" she grunted irritably, scratching behind her head, her long, black hair out of whack from an undoubtedly wild and short sleep. Only while waiting for a response, did she look at the clock beside her bed, then suddenly moved her hand towards the comm-badge that was placed on a bed table.

"Dinox here, Captain. Can I help you?"

"I… " she didn't know how to bring this. She has her pride.

"I'm troubled by an unusual level of anxiety. I…"

"…slept bad, captain?" the witty Denobulan uttered through the comm with a slight smile on his face.

"Astute as ever, doctor."

"Captain. Being anxious is nothing to be ashamed of. Come to sickbay and I will get you something that will help you get through the rest of the night."

The Captain rolled her eyes. Of course, she needed to represent herself to the rest of her crew. She was the highest ranking officer aboard, after all. Her hand grabbed around the rims of her pants and she quickly moved it over her PJ's. Her eyes turning to the button, as she put it in and zipped it up. Grabbing a shirt from within her closet, she wanted to walk out of the door, but forgot she had it on manual control, slamming into it with a grunt.

"God, Damnit."

Her eyes narrow and she virtually slammed the controls, making the door slide open sideways. Pulling on her shirt while walking towards the turbolift, she was well on the way towards sickbay.

USS Basileia, Sickbay 1, October 11, 1.40 hours..

The doors to the sickbay zoom open and there she stood, right in the middle, gazing upon the round chamber and in particular the Denobulan Chief Medical officer, who was burning the midnight oil there. He turned around with a smile, the slightly corpulent form huddled in a medical uniform that was inherent to the Denobula medical directorate. No one minded him doing so, after all the Federation, to which that system was also a member, meant to put in front of all else complete tolerance on a cultural level.

"Ahhhh, Captain, I'm glad to see you here," he said, with his usual positive, optimistic swagger.

"We can't use a captain distraught by rattled nerves, now can we."

"No", Jan Hunter slightly grinned, starting to lighten up by the Denobulan's gentle mood alone already, "We can't."

"Now, you said something about something that will help me sleep?" she asked, slightly tilting her head in question, hoping he would give it to her quick. She was scheduled to be in the chair very early tomorrow, meaning she could very well use every last second she could sleep without nightmares.

"Here." Dinox turned towards her, holding a little jar with a name on it that seemed almost too Earthly.

The captain raised her eyebrow slightly, in disbelief. "Valerian? Isn't that a sedative, doctor?"

"Yes, basically, it is. But as you might know, so is 'something that helps you sleep'."

A grin played on the lips of the captain, tilting her head sideways almost constantly, pretty much tired out by her nightly encounter with misery.

"If valerian is doted to a person in too high a dose, it could backfire quite a bit. But trust me, people on Earth have used other means to get to sleep. Sleeping pills that were loaded with sodium pentothal, pallets with liquid knockout substances, not to mention morphine. Valerian might be dangerous while misused, but a certified doctor like myself is perfectly aware of what's the excellent dose."

He smiled and looked around, putting a small pill in his hand, with a bowl and a grinding tool, it was almost as if they traveled half a millennium back in time, but then, he had an affinity for brewing teas the feudal way. Those teas were not even half bad. Within the minute, a slightly smoldering, hot tea was stalled out in front of her, the everlasting smile on the Denobulan's face imprinting itself slowly upon the captains moody face…

"Thanks doctor. I'll bring the bowl back to you tomorrow."

"That's fine Captain. Have a good night."

USS Basileia, Bridge, October 11, 3.35 hours

The rounded, sterile bridge once more showed itself to be a genuine command center of which the Basileia is deserving. People walking in and out with data pads litter the ground and this time, another butt was planted in the captain's chair. Spunktry had his back leant into the seat, while looking out over a viewscreen full of stardust zooming by. They were still in pursuit of the Tellarite freighter that had stolen their crewmembers. Suddenly, a voice came from the side, the sensory officer running his fingers over the resolution amplifiers to make sure of his findings.

"Commander. I'm reading something closeby," he uttered with a clear voice.

"What is it, Ensign?"

Ensign Nathan Cole was burning the midnight oil just as well, but luckily, his shift only started late in the evening. For him it was a great honor to work on the bridge. After all, he was still an Ensign, but his expertise of telemetry analysis has offered him a steadfast bridge post.

"I believe it is an escape pod, moving at sub light speed. Sir, it's Tellarite." he said.

Spunktry suddenly launched himself up from the chair and looked at him, narrowing his eyes.

"An escape pod?"

"Yes, si…"

"Haul it in!"

"Y… yes sir."

A sudden rush of fingers travel over the formost left panel on the diagnostic console. The Basileia, who had dropped out of warp, now moved towards it on high impulse on the commands put in by the helmsman, who happened to be Ensign Nathan Cole's sister, Iris Cole.

It was visible that the USS Basileia was still in the middle of repairs. She might be flying still, and warp capable, but the problem resided that the ambush in the asteroid field has left the hull of the sleek, 528 meters long vessel filled with hull breaches, burn marks and dents. It seemed to glide through space though with undiminished grace, it looked slightly like a sovereign class decreased in size, but was smaller and had different nacelles. It approached the small pod quickly, its shadow already being casted over the small one man vessel.

"Take it in!"

A sudden release of blue lighting energy started to emanate from the now very close by put. It was heavily damaged, but it seemed to be quite intact. It gradually disappeared and then rematerialized in the second shuttlebay. Immediately, Commander Sybok suddenly turned his head towards Spunktry.

"I am reading two weakened life signs from within the craft. They appear… human."

"Spunktry to Sickbay! Medical teams to shuttlebay two on the double"

"Yes, sir," the voice through the comm sounded.

Spunktry, who was very taken in by the fate of his comrades, just like his Captain was, moved towards the turbolift door, but turned back once, to notify Sybok.

"You have the bridge, Commander Sybok."

Tellarite Freighter, October 10, 16.20 hours

The Tellarite Freighter's darkened brig was still as uninspiring as ever before, the sounds of light conversations had once more increased in disagreements and rustling quarrel. 9 Klingons, Vulcans and Humans together in 8 cells aboard a ship saturated by low energy radiolythic particles make for an interesting discussion group. In the corner cell, the Vulcan officer and leader of Alpha Hazard team, Selar, was still highly occupied with trying to figure a way out of the confinement. With no way at all to access the security protocols of the level nine force fields that emanate in the door sills, his last chance was remodulating the battery pack of his Hazard suit to take on the resonance frequency of the EM field. He turned to the side, looking at the uninviting, dark wall that made up the right wall of his cell.

"My attempts would certainly thrive in a little silence, gentlemen."

His calm voice seemed to seethe the air rather softly, yet it managed to gain the attention of all others. The quarrels between Randy Orton, Ben Olsen and Fred Astin on one side and Torin and K'Zin, the Klingon man and woman on the other, started to once more subside.

"Like it matters that you have defeated a hundred people with your bare hands. If you can't break out of this cell with your bare hands, then shut up about it," a rather angered Daniel Orton started to counter.

"Sorry, lieutenant. I will be quiet. How is your idea coming up yet?"

Selar turned back to his battery, using a small probing tool to remodulate and thereby manipulate the resistance of the interchange casings. He wanted to reduce it so it would be better fit for the job as to mimic the exact behaviour of the field that held him trapped inside his inhospitable room. His eyebrow raised at the sound of Orton's question back towards him.

"I have made great progress, but it would benefit Miss Olsen quite a bit if I get this done as soon as possible. She will not be able to survive much longer."

"I understand, sir," Torin said in his brash Klingon voice.

They all fell silent, the only sound emanating from the room was the occasional ticking from the remodulator. It slightly resembled the cracking of a primitive Geiger measurement unit. Selar looked back towards the battery's injector casing. That was the main problem, as it had to be reversed in polarity. Since there was only one, rather grueling method to reach it and pull it off, he had to sacrifice many hours to get to it. In fact, that was the main predicament for what he was trying to accomplish. The resonance frequency was easily probed, but he needed his two batteries to have exactly opposite polarity in order to create an inverse field that could be sustained through the force field. That would mean that if he made it work, he would be able to move through the forcefield as if it was thin air. The principle on which Borg being able to move right through their safety force fields is based on the same scientific theorem of creating an inverse field.

He would turn his head to the side, finally moving the remodulator out of the battery casing and once more closing it. He inspected the object and then placed it back into his Hazard suit. He pushed off the ground with his hand and stood to his feet, upright and static as a Vulcan should be. He turned towards those he could see, which in this case was the calmer human, Garry Weatherby.

"I am prepared to make a new attempt," was all he said as he prepared his suit. His hand traveled to a control unit, activating the shielding of the Hazard suit. In all this time, Garry, who has done nothing but watch Selar be busy at it for the last twenty four hours went to sit up.

"It's incredible. Still I can't believe that those idiots didn't think of taking away our suits."

"I don't know, Mr Weatherby. This environment is radioactive and they claimed not to have enough to inoculate us against this radiation as well. Letting us retain our hazard suit would be a logical choice, if they want us alive for something else."

"Then why don't they get Annie some help, for God's sake? Her suit is damaged. If she is exposed to this radiation for too much longer, the damaged to her internal organs would be too extreme to reverse."

"I don't know, Mr Weatherby. Speculation isn't a defining attribute for a Vulcan. Now if you please let me…"

Suddenly, Selar's suit lets out a short vibration and a zooming sound as shortly, a blueish glow surrounds his form, then dissipates again. The shields to his Hazard suit had become active again. He hoped dearly that it would work right now, before the guards would return to inspect their prisoners and take notice of his efforts. He slightly hesitantly inched towards the force field, then took a step, but as soon as his leg and chest would come close to it, a strange mixture of green and blue glows seem to interact with one another, shocking him slightly and jolting him back. His respiration seemed to increase slightly, but he soon stood back on his feet.

"Bad luck, pal. Just give it up already," the negative minded Orton muttered to his superior.

Selar wasn't so sure of his failure. He noticed a discrepancy in the energy signature of the force field as his suit's shielding touched it. He looked down towards his hand for a moment, again hesitantly moving. This time, only his hand moved forward through the air. The suit's shielding should encompass him entirely, the shielding moving along with his limbs. When his finger came close to the forcefield, the recoil was nonexistent and suddenly, the clashing green of the force field with the bluish glare of the shielding started to become bluer and bluer. Suddenly, Lieutenant Junior Grade Weatherby sat up and widened his eyes suddenly. He tilted his head to the side and clenched his fist. He seemed to be doing it.

Selar's efforts continued, and his entire finger officially existed outside of the cell. He went to stand sideways, first moving more of his arms through. It came slowly, but it came. He dared not go faster, so he took it calmly. His entire lower arm was through, and then his humerus came, then his shoulder stuck through the force field as if it was naught but a rippling water surface

"Go Selar!" several of the others started to utter as they noticed that their leader's extreme creativity seemed to pay off yet again. Creativity was another of the properties not exactly innate to Vulcans, but he seemed to possess it to quite impressive levels. Within a few moments, Selar stood outside in the brig control room, shaking his leg to get it out of the forcefield as well. Because the EM field resonance was mimicked exactly, the alarm didn't go off.

"Ok, gentlemen. Get your gear ready. I am going to get you out. We must be quick. My batteries drain very quickly when the energy requirements are this high."

He thought for a while as he looked at the controls. He knew the ship's internal sensors were still very much saturated by their own radiaton, therefore most probably inoperative. He knew Tellarites didn't have that impressive sensors. What he did know, was that if he tampered with the locking sequence of the cells, it would set off an alarm.

"I can't free you with the console. It will set them off. We must be quick now. Mister Olsen, be ready to help your sister up. I'm going to reach through each of your cells to allow you out."

As of now, the lack of security protocols aboard were rather eminent, beginning with the strange fact that the brig was unguarded and only a few people each 30 minutes went by. The last ones went by about four minutes ago, so he guessed he had plenty of time left. He also estimated, because the ship was rather large, that they had a minimal crew compliment.

Garry Weatherby was first. Selar reached through the force field with both his hand, grabbing Garry by the upper arm and holding him slightly close, somewhat in a hug. Only like that, the force field around Selar would encompass Garry in total as well.

"I love you too."

"Don't, Mr. Weatherby. Don't. I may show no emotions but these actions make me rather uncomfortable."

The Klingons looked at it with a reared head, grunting slightly, not particularly looking forward towards Selar hugging around Weatherby and pulling him through the force field that separates his cell from the rest of the room. K'Zin lets out a growl and turned her face away. In the meanwhile, Selar was busy freeing Orton in the same manner. Out of the blue, a strange tremor shakes the vessel about for a moment, making a rather familiar type of torque run through her bulkheads. The crewmembers who can, look at each other and nod..

"We're changing course," one of them confirmed and rubbed behind his head.

"But we have no clue where to or where we are," Astin added calmly.

"No, we don't, but It might be important. It might be their destination. If that is the case, their schedules might change or they might come and check in," Thei suddenly suggested.

"That's true. Hurry up, Lieutenant."

"I am doing my best, Ensign," Lieutenant Selar uttered calmly.

Three people in total were now liberated from their cramped cells and just as Selar went towards Torin's Cell – as much as he did not look forward to hugging a Klingon, he wanted to have it done as soon as he could – and tried to move his arms through. A sudden jolt passed through his shields and he turned back.

"This one has another resonance frequency," he uttered slowly and then looked about.

"I recommend you try the others first, Lieutenant," Weatherby suggested. "You might miss one who does have the same frequency and have to set the emitter for it once too many."

"Good thinking, Lieutenant Weatherby."

He moved towards another cell, the one that held Thei inside. Once more, the jolt of rejection charges around his form and pushed him back slightly. It was until he reached the joint cell of Ben and Annie Olsen that he had success once more. His hands pierce through the energy field, reaching out for Annie at first.

"Try holding on to me, Miss Olsen. I am going to get you out now."

The woman, weakened by radiation sickness, nodded slightly and lets out a barely audible "Okay". Her eyes were filled with a strange grey glimmer, as if she wasn't sure anymore if she would survive this endeavor or not. At this point, it didn't even seem to matter anymore. Supported by Selar, the woman was eased down onto the cold ground.

"Damn cold."

K'Zin shivered. At least she was out now, but most of the others had already long forgotten the poor heating in the brig section of the freighter. Maybe they faked their core breach so good they have to get home on auxiliary power alone. Too bad that once someone mentions something, other people are prone to sense it too, once more. While a determined Selar was pulling Ben Olsen through the rippling surface of the force field, the others were suddenly acknowledging the presence of the cold. Though Torin was highly affected as well, he too didn't say anything.

"Thanks for bringing it up. Very attentive of yours."

"Hey, what the…?"

From behind the corner of the entrance, a fairly large Tellarite suddenly storms in and stands fast, his eyes widening at what he sees. Four people outside their holding cells suddenly snap their gaze towards him. He turned his gaze down towards his hip, to a holstered rifle, but in his attempt to unholster it, he was cut short by a few seconds. The trained hand of the Vulcan Thei travels towards the right side of the man's neck, applying pressure against the neck meridian on the appropriate spot. Cut short in his attempt to arm himself and signal his comrades, his body suddenly stops functioning, letting the man fall limply to the ground. Thei turned towards the rest of the team, most particularly towards Lieutenant Commander Selar, who was remodulating the frequency of his personal shielding in order to mimic the frequency of the other cell's force fields.

"We have to hurry. They'll probably not take long to figure out we're escaping now," the now free Ben Olsen uttered.

"At least we've obtained one weapon."

Thei turned about, looking upon Weatherby and extending the hand holding the rifle. Giving it to him, he nodded and started to inspect it, bringing it to stun setting.

Fred Astin was the last to be pulled through the force field of his cell, then, all nine of the group were standing in the control chamber. They make sure they stand on a guarded position, three people at all times looking out either one of two entrances. The corridors adjacent to the brig were empty. They were fortunate that the Tellarites were severely understaffed at the moment.

"Anyone has thought of a plan while we were locked up. We had plenty of time for it."

"I'd say we make way for the escape pods. The Freighter's scanners are probably still clogged with radiolythic particles. With a little luck they won't notice that we're gone until we're… gone," Orton said.

"A plausible plan, Mr. Orton. It is worth a try," Selar turned about, heightening one of his brows while looking out over the corridor.

"Torin, check the internal layout of this vessel on that console. Where are the escape pods?"

The Klingon walked towards the console Selar did not want to bypass for the reason of security. He looked about, taking a few seconds to figure out the controls. His finger tapped the 'grid' button, bringing up a wireframe of the freighter. Tilting his head slightly, he pressed 'display primary systems' and opened the legenda. Moving over the words that are stalled beside the manifest's bullet listing, lighting up to a slightly brighter color as he did. Suddenly, he moved towards what he believed were the escape pods, as suddenly on several places in the wireframe pretty much identical cylinders were lodged into the superstructure of the freighter. He nodded and turned around, after ascertaining their locations deck-wise.

"The closest escape pods are on this deck, through this door, then two times right and second left, sir."

He pointed to the right entrance to the brig, as suddenly, the nine team members sprung in action, Weatherby with the rifle on the front. As quietly as possible, the party advanced through the bowels of the freighter, their footsteps baffled by the well insulated ground. Weatherby turned to peer around the corner of a passageway to the left, seeing one Tellarite 5 meters down the corridor, working a maintenance console. He was unaware. Weatherby aligned his weapon and discharged a single shot, impacting with the Tellarite's side and sending a numbing charge through his body. He was disabled. He very swiftly moved towards the lying Tellarite and searched him for an additional weapon. He found a small arm discharger. Somewhat like a phaser, but then firing little discharges, pulses. He tossed it to Torin who grunted and grabbed the weapon all too gladly.

"Let's move. We don't have much time."

Just as they turn around to the right corridor, as intended, they hear the sound of another tellarite's voice.

"What the hell happened here?"

Clothed in a black clothing, giving slight protection against the onboard radiation, the short bodied Tellarite looked around the corner. He saw nothing, as the party had disappeared to the right walkway just in time. He turned about, slapping the comm port in the wall mounted console.

"Gusan to the captain. We have a man down."

"What? How can that be? Check the brig, now!"

Quite rattled, the Tellarite sped up as he walked the two corridors towards the brig section, but once there, he dropped his weapon out of disbelief. The forcefields were still active, but the cells were empty.

"How is this possible? Captain! They're gone."

"Damned! Where have they gone?" he said with a loud voice through the comm. It was clear he didn't like things like this happen on his watch. The distraught Tellarite turned his attention to the wall mounted console. The ship's manifest was still accessed, lighting the escape pods throughout the ship.

"They're going to the escape pods, sir."

"Alert security. Go to alert!"

All of a sudden, a loud wooping sound seethed through the bowel of the poorly lit freighter. A sound that went through bone and marrow, a sound that alerted the escapees to work faster. Now having two weapons, the odds once more increased in their favor. Once more they were fortunate that escape pods were rather close. They were on a very low deck of the ship.

"They sounded the alarm."

"Shit!" Orton grunted. "That was too fast."

"It should be through this corridor, sir," Weatherby said, then Selar nodded, moving his arm to gesture the rest,

"Get a move on, peeps," Ben Olsen said as he supported his sister.

There was one Tellarite in the corridor. The access to the escape ship was a cavity in the room that lead to five pods, sequenced linearly over about 13 meters of wall. The alien was already aimed to the according side, letting loose a discharge of energy from yet another pulse rifle. The group wildly scattered to the left and the right walls of the corridor. The first shot hit nothing but air, Weatherby, holding the rifle, returned the favor, knocking the Tellarite back and draping his motionless, unconscious body against the cold floor.

The indentation gave at least a bit of cover. Thei moved towards the controls of the foremost left escape pod hatch, trying to get to the controls.

"He appears to have encrypted the pod controls. I will attempt a manual override."

"Be quick about it. Hearing that alarm makes me think they'll be here very quickly!" K'Zin grunted, followed by several Klingon slangs of surprisingly fertile meaning.

"Astin, take the second pod and tap in manually, Torin, the center pod."

"Here, Crewman Orton, take this rifle."

The group emitted a strong sense of activity, while three people were attempting to bypass incryption, three people were posting guard with their weapons raised and the three others, Ben and Annie Olson and Commander Selar, were covered behind the ridge in the corridor wall,

"Come on Annie, this is the last Asolfynine," he said worriedly when filling his hypospray, injecting the painkiller and anti-radiolythic compound into his sister's bloodstream. "Try to hold up sweetheart we're out of here in no…"

Suddenly, a searing blotch of pulse energy impacted the opposite side of the wall, letting a loud, cracking sound of steel against steel be heard throughout the corridor. Thei and Weatherby took up guarded posts against the wall, shooting past the ridges to keep them at bay. A firefight came to existence, purplish pulses flying back and forth between the walls, constantly, the impacts could easily be mistaken for hammerstrikes.

"Hurry, people. We're being pelted here!"

"I'm busy at it, damnit. Give me a break, this is hard enough as it is!"

"Stay calm," Thei butted in. "Shouting at one another is not going to further our cause." At her words, the panel she was trying to manually override let go a crackling spark. The power to the pod door inverted and it clacked open.

"Success!" Weatherby said between firing his shots at the sound of the hatch door opening. Torin, who was about to come and bring his firearm into the frey. The pods were situated in the middle of the corridor, there were two ways the Tellarites could come from.

"Torin, watch our backs!" he shouted as suddenly, two Tellarites came from behind, Torin was able to dive away from the shots just in time, hiding behind a ridge, however, he came back in full, standing in the middle of the corridor.. "It's a good day to die!" He aimed his pulsephaser and lets out two small bursts, whose kinetic energy seemed to be enough to send the two Tellarites hurtling back. "Ka'Plah!" he quickly walked over to take their weapons, but when he reached for the closest Tellarite, grabbing his pulse rifle, several more of them came running to the back end of the corridor, eyeing the Klingon take the weapon. They opened fire, their purple blotches of energy impacting the side of the windows. He turned his head and in a rather funny ensemble, skittered back with one of two rifles. He looked at the small pulsephaser in his hand and tossed it to Selar.

"Here Commander. They're coming down on our asses!"

In their desperation to hold the spot, everyone realized that the chance of them all making it out were minimal. Thei looked towards Ben Olsen and his injured sister. She nodded to them.

"The two of you, move into the pod, now."

"But we're traveling at warp!"

"If you stay here, you might die, but if you attempt and escape and the Captain finds you, you might also die, but then they will most certainly know where we are going. Plus Annie is going to die for sure if she stays here. Take this pad!" Weatherby threw it at Ben.

"Destination Coordinates, rerouted from the Manifest."

Ben Olsen nodded and under the rain of purplish pulses, he huddled his arm around her sister's waist, supporting her. She looked very sleepy due to her progressed radiation sickness and the soft glare in his eyes would give away that she had omitted her life. Any thought of surviving had sunken deep into the recesses of her mind. A sudden cough came from her mouth, as thin red blood came out, a small amount, but certainly an unnerving sight.

"Oh shit…"

Ben pushed her through the hatch door with all his might and then went in himself. A one man pod, but two people wormed their way inside. Under the constant rattle of enemy fire, they retreated closer together.

"Drop your weapons. You are surrounded," the leader Tellarite grunted out from behind a row of well armed crewmembers. It was two to one for the outnumbered Starfleet members, eight coming at them from the front, six from behind. The last thing Thei managed to do was make a blind motion towards the escape pod controls with her hand. A short bleep was heard, then the rattling of their weapons falling to the ground.

"We surrender," Selar uttered, loud and clear. All seven raised both their hands.

"Captain," one of the Tellarites that made up the security detail talked through the comm. "Two of them managed to get in an escape pod. They have jettisoned. Do you want me to retrieve it."

A long silence plagued the corridor, thoughts seemed to rise to a high as the Tellarites look about and then nodded. Seven of them came forth to cuff them this time. They would not take any more chances.

"Leave them. If they're not destroyed or killed, we can't drop out of Warp. The radiation will postpone our efforts to recreate a stable warp field. Put the others back in the brig and post guards this time. Prepare the crew for arithrazine injections."

Somewhere in Space, October 10, 16.54 hours

The dark colored freighter was groomed by the slight light of nearby suns, the space dust particles flying by indicating the warp speed it travels in. The almost 600 meter long behemoth of a craft seemed to reflect an awkward silence, the tumults inside being baffled by the vacuum of space that encompassed it. The course of the vessel brought it outside of Federation space.

A sudden motion rippled the side of the craft, several air locks of the Calhoun type clicked loose, a round constriction ring that held one of the escape pods in place. Constrictor after constrictor was torn loose as the disengagement sequence completed. At the last moment, as the escape pod was torn from the hull. Supspace torque suddenly applied to the rigid hull of the pod, creating hundreds of micro-fractures and even slightly bended the outer hull. Pieces of panel were torn loose from the skin, being caught in a giant tumble as it suddenly dropped to sublight speed.

"Holy Shiiiiiiii…"

The inside of the craft was riddled with sparks, conduits blowing and severe torsion playing the two bodies inside back and forth.

"The inertial dampers are malfunctioning.. A few moments more of this and we'll be squished to Jelly!"

Annie, being rocked to life at that moment, moved her hand to a control panel at the side, her fingers moving over it. "Propulsion power to structural integrity. Try to… slow us down, Ben."

"Working on it."

He grunted and looked about at the Tellarite controls, his hands rattling over the port thrusters and engaging the brake propulsors.

"Decellerating nominally."

"Good… Job." Suddenly, a peeping automated alert went through the pod. Both of them started to snap their gazes around, looking for the cause of the alert.

"What's that?" Ben calmly said. Annie turned towards the controls, though tired she is she attempted her best to try and find the problem.

"A moment. I'm not seeing anything."

"Well that's friggin great. What kind of warning is it anyway?"

Annie tried to sit up, shrugging slightly to show that she wasn't really much of a professional on Tellarite systems. "I'm figuring that out… right now," she said out of breath. Her eyes turn towards another console, regulating life support.

"There we have it. We're losing atmospheric pressure!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, but that action merited a response of coughing up yet some more blood.

"We've sprung a leak, brother."

"Oh shit!"

He suddenly started to move around rather wildly, trying to find a leak, he turned back and forth and looked over the hull. It wasn't visible with the bare eyes, or it just didn't stand out.

"I can't find it! Where is it?"

"I'm trying … to find it, damnit. Let me do my… job."

She turned to the diagnostic console and though her vision blurred, her physique degraded by the effects of the radiation. Her eyes rolled through her sockets like loose marbles, her concentration slipping as her brain seemed to suffer from an intolerable headache. One the asolfynine wasn't able to lift.

"Aft section… A piece of plating that's designated. F-8b. Atmospheric pressure dropping by 0.06 percent a second. Quickly!"

The motion of Ben's limbs had not stopped as of yet, turning towards the indicated hull plate, he suddenly yanked off his hazard suit and tilted his head towards Annie. "They say that Hazard suits are resistant to high pressure differentials. In the absence of adhesive plastering, I'll put my suit in front of the hole." He grinned, quickly moving off his chest piece and pushing it in front of the hole. He stomped his foot on it and as he laid, his head cocked back towards Annie.

"That helps a lot. The air supply is holding steady."

"Thank God," he grunted and moved his foot away, but then, Annie turned to the console.

"It's starting again, 0,00019 percent per second."

"Oh god damnit. Do I have to keep my finger in the peeping hole?"

"It appears... so."

Ben grunted and slammed his foot against the hazard suit, and the hull. Applying slight pressure was enough to block out the leaking effect. His eyes travel to his sister, of course being terribly distracted by the unwelcome hull compromise.

Six hours have gone by. The condition of the Pod didn't change. The loss of atmosphere earlier on has sprouted a shortage of oxygen pretty quickly. Annie Olsen, who was already on the brink of dying, received all the help she could get from her brother. He might have trained to be a field medic, but here his medicinal knowledge is lacking and he did all he could to stabilize his sister. And then some. He however did not disclose the fact that he was getting weak as well. He has lowered the atmospheric pressure to save up oxygen.

"I'll be... hhhh damned. How long is our ... hhh ... supply going to last...?"

Annie Olsen was completely exhausted, on the brink of losing consciousness. Luckily her brain was still protected by the helmet and therefore not really damaged. Else a tour to dream land was only a one way trip and there would be no coming back. First a coma would set in trapping her in the land of her dreams and then, fragments of her mind will be shut down, one by one, as if turning out several hundreds of lights with an interval. The happy sun, shining above like a disco ball would start to pale, but then, when she would look back, it is the only light that's still there. And she would go to it, her dream being the gateway to eternal sleep. She sure hopes she will dream there, too.

But, that wasn't about to happen. She breathed in, having a hard time to, but well audibly.

" Hhhhhh... What?... Our.. supply you ask?" She let go a little laugh and weakly looked at the console, her hand concentrating very hard to tap the right button.

"Five... more hours at most..." Then, she started to laugh a little bit. In all her hidden despair, she suddenly started to laugh, but not really about the condition of the air supply. A cackling sound resonated through the tight bulkheads of the escape pod.

"Apollo 13..." Even more laughter came from her, as much as she could, knowing laughing just consumed more oxygen, but she couldn't help it.

"Scuse me, Annie?" a confused Ben Olsen raised his eyebrow with a slight, questioning grin on his face.

"Apollo... 13..." Annie said, between laughs, "...is one of the first spacecrafts conceived by humans. After... Apollo 8... had successfully landed on the... moon in 1969..." she coughed for a moment, another spat of blood, "They tried another time... but, the module had an entire... panel blown out by a faulty valve."

She took a time to catch breath, which in this thinned atmosphere required quite more effort. Like a wounded sherpa on 5 and a half kilometers high ground.

"I don't... know how long they have been in that thing. 48 hours. Maybe ... more, but they made it back, somehow. 3 people, in a spacecraft conceived with nuts and bolts and early '70 computers."

Ben Olsen, grinning slightly wider, tilts his head slightly... "Where are... you hinting at, Sis?"

In a laugh, she slapped the side of the pod, bending over to rest her head on her knees.

"This thing is supposed to be a thousand times more advanced than that spacecraft. But it doesn't even have a rudimentary Oxygen/CO2 filter! It's like a box filled with air. Pathetic. The Apollo 13 even had one. Tellarites may be excellent metallurgists, but their intelligence... HhhhhHH ... is questionable."

Ben laughed slightly and cuddled up with his sister, holding her close, supporting her shoulder as he rests his head against the wall. At all times, he keeps his foot against the hazard suit and the hull.

"Ah well. Tellarites might be stupid sometimes, but at least they have escape pods, An. Most Klingon ships don't have escape pods. If they get... into a nagging situation.. hhhh ... it will be their death and they will ... look it in the eye with a smile."

"Crazy Klingons."

"Yeah. Torin's a nice guy, though."

"Speaking about Torin," Annie started, weakly. "What about him and the other six? What... will happen to them? ... hhhhhhh ... I hope they won't be killed for trying... to escape."

"I don't know, sweetheart. I feel bad about leaving, but Weatherby was right. I think we made the right choice. If Jan was here, she would say the same thing. We made the right choice... hhhh ... At least, we have remote... chances that you will live."

"Yay me," she cynically uttered, but then fell silent. The silence affected Ben as well and the entire pod, floating through the hazardous vacuum of space, once more fell completely silent.

Tellarite Escape Pod, October 11, 3.20 hours

Calmly, like a wind tainted with winter's chill, the Pod glides through the cold depths of space. The inside was as cold as the outside however. Life support had been disengaged to save oxygen, the temperature inside gradually decreasing, it was already eight degrees centigrade below zero. Ben and Annie Olsen, coated in slight layer of tiny frost crystals, were huddled together, but further completely immobile. Not a sign of life was to be seen, except for the weak respiration. It was gastly, a ghost pod, somehow Mr Olsen's foot was still lodged against the tiny hull breach.

Suddenly, a whirring sound came from a console. The proximity sensor. It did not have much reach, but certainly it accounted for an approaching body. However, there was nobody conscious enough to answer it. Hails came in, but were unanswered. The cold had sunk to a gastly minus twenty-five degrees.

"Commander. I'm reading something closeby."

"What is it, Ensign?"

"I believe it is an escape pod, moving at sub light speed. Sir, it's Tellarite."

"An escape pod?"

"Yes, sir…"

"Haul it in!"

"Y… yes sir."

Whatever consciousness was still left in their bodies was suddenly overshadowed, most literally. A large shadow was cast over the small pod. The shadow a ship casted. The USS Basileia, holding par above the probe. Then, the walls seemed to become liquid, a bluish haze taking the walls and the skin apart, bodies being disassembled in complete, then being sent in a stream of hyper-accelerated matter inside the bulkheads of the Basileia where it completely reformed, totally and exactly the way it was.

"I am reading two weakened life signs from within the craft. They appear… human."

"Spunktry to Sickbay! Medical teams to shuttlebay two on the double"

"Yes, sir,"

The captain seemed to become stimulated, jolted into action as the readings from inside the shuttle finally came through. There were two human lifesigns aboard.

"You have the bridge, Commander Sybok."

Then, suddenly, she fell silent, only to puncture the silence by snapping her gaze towards Spunktry. "Gidean. Come with me."

USS Basileia, Shuttlebay 2, October 11, 3.39 hours

A worried Captain Hunter suddenly barged in, the doors to Shuttle Bay Two sliding open with the familiar noise. Spunktry, who had a hard time following his Captain and former team leader, straddled after her and enterd a few seconds later. A bead of sweat was clearly visible upon the captain's forehead, rolling down her firm skin, over the bridge of her nose. Her arms extended to lean against the shuttlepod, then suddenly her hesitation became clear. Sudden sparks went through her head. Short images she saw in her nightmare. Weatherby, peeled to his muscle tissue, his skin draping down his face, horridly deformed. Her hand hovered a few inches from the external handle, but then, she squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed her strong fingers around the handle.

With a twist and a powerful pull, the safety lock was opened, and as she pulled back to open the hatch, the sound of air rushing in was heard. Oh no, she thought, then completely slammed the door open, her eyes widening at what she saw. The half-frozen brother and sister, huddling together. She moved in, but was overwhelmed by the sudden low temperature.

"Whow!" She pulled her head back.

Suddenly, the slightly corpulent Denobulan doctor Dinox rushed in with four medical assistants following in his footsteps. He was always very seriously when it came to injuries, not having wasted a single second getting here.

"Coming through... Coming through... Captain, please step away. Let me tend to them."

Jan, being caught between the cold of the pod and the zeal of the doctor, suddenly stepped out of the way, almost tripping over one of the struts of the escape pod. She regained her footing, but not before delivering an agitated look towards the ground. Her movements were halted by the large hand resting on her shoulder...

"Faith, Jan."

"Faith, Gidean. I know."

Dinox looked at them, his medical tricorder ascertaining a triage state and a report of their damaged and impaired organ systems. He deduced the situation very quickly and then suddenly turned out of the pod.

"I need an emergency transport. Beam these two directly to my sickbay. The four of you...!"

The medical assistance almost went to stand in line as if they were part of the military. It was evident and heard of that Dinox managed his medical staff rather strictly, but that was something he was respected for and granted him the lowest casualty/triage rate in 10 years.

"Get yourselves back to sickbay. NOW!"

The mostly witty Denobulan surprised everyone nearby with his sudden outburst of activity. Then, when he wanted to follow, the Captain suddenly turned to him.

"Dinox! Will they survive?" a worried Captain almost grabbed the Denobulan by the arm, but refrained from it, remembering they do not like to be touched too much.

"Captain. I assure you that I will do everything I can. Mr Olsen has a good chance to survive, but honestly, his sister has severe radiation poisoning and my hopes are slim for her. She has gone very far, her interstitial fluids are seeping out of her damaged cell membranes, diluting her blood, causing many hemorrhages to occur. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm in a hurry. Her lungs have to be cleared of blood. DeSalva!" he suddenly yelled through his comm-badge.

"Get Annie Olsen on a respirator immediately!"

He quickly turned on his heels and ran out of the Shuttlebay.

USS Basileia, Captain's Ready Room, October 12, 10.40 hours

Captain's Log, October 12, 2386: We are still in pursuit of the freighter that without provocation has taken my crewmembers hostage. Believing we have gained significant ground, the engineering detail is doing everything it can to boast our speed to close the gap between us and the Tellarites as quickly as it can. Commander Dick Hardy has been an invaluable member of my crew, his efforts in keeping us going are very noteworthy.

Last night, somewhere around half past four – I forgot looking at the time. I was too caught up in finding something, fearing it was not what I hoped – we retrieved a heavily damaged Tellarite escape pod on board of which we found Mr. and Ms. Olson, huggled together. They were in quite a banged up shape when they were retrieved from that pod, having suffered from oxygen shortage and hypothermia. Ben Olsen is already recovering from his ordeal with the cold, but his sister Annie is in a much worse shape. Stricken by severe radiation poisoning, whether she survives or not is yet inconclusive. All I know is that she was on the brink of dying when we found them. I praise myself lucky that we did not find them any later, but I can't help letting my thoughts dwell on the other seven members of Hazard Team Alpha. Lieutenant Commander Selar, Ensign Thei, Torin, K'Zin, Crewman Astin, not to mention my old maties, Garry Weatherby and Daniel Orton. I fear for them, but our tenacity must not wane at this moment. This is not the time to fear what awaits us. Fear can only delay us.

Captain's Log, Supplemental: Lieutenant Commander Dick Hardy has brought several things to my attention involving the goings-on in Engineering. According to what he is saying, the odd imbalance in the warpcore has not yet rescinded, despite all of his best efforts. He said it was like his warp-core was cursed; unexplainable, small mechanical malfunctions, chemical imbalance, peaks of pressure in the M/AM containment field. His steady crew of engineers does double shifts in order to finally get the warp core to peak functionality, as well as an extra detail working to restore whatever parts of the deflector it can, but he also said he might have to admit that he has not the slightest clue to whatever it is that's actually going in. I decided to grant his request to do a ship wide magneton scan and chart every relais, every gel pack, every bio-neural circuit, every anti-matter injector and plasma conduit. They are busy at it now, results will be in within the next several hours. I hope this information will help my very competent Chief Engineer to finally ascertain the location of his gastly malfunction.

Captain's Personal Log: Ever since Alpha Hazard Team had been abducted by the Tellarites, I have had dreams. Dreams concerning and twisting the events in my past. Last night, I had such a vivid dream about the campaign on Venati IV. Everything was completely accurate, until I looked at the heavily deformed face of one of my closest buddies. Somehow, the arrival of the pod had made me think of it as a bad omen. Fear of what might happen to the rest of them engulfs my being, taking away my ability to sleep. No, losing my men has always caused me sleepless nights. It has made me passionate about making sure I would never loose anyone under my command. Boy, I was aiming high. Now it seems, I've aimed too high.

When I was dispatched in the middle of a thick jungle, hidden within environmental equipment, completely surrendered to our own innate ability to track enemies and survive, I had the responsibility over half a dozen excellent men. Now, we are talking about in excess of three hundred crewmen, an overwhelming change, to be sure. It is like if my trust emphasized a royal patch of butter on half a dozen pieces of bread, now distributed over two hundred sandwiches. Spread too thin, it makes it dry, desiccated, but I never thought these four pips on my collar would take away my alertness. Maybe my dreams are telling me to be ashamed of myself. Or maybe, just maybe, it's a built in mental security mechanism to aid me in getting my confidence and alertness back. Yes, that's what I love to think.

USS Basileia, Exercise Room, October 12, 11.25 hours.

Loud groans were well audible throughout the room, the scent of testosterone and sweat thick enough to sink to the floor as several men and one woman, their bodies shiny with the sweat of intensive effort, were working out. The one woman that was there was the captain, Jan Hunter, accompanied by her number one, Gidean Spunktry, Holding a dumbbell with each hand, acting as weights to increase the rigors of doing situps by an additional 24 kilograms, her feet were excellently held in place by Spunktry's hands on her ankles and refraining them from moving upwards. Their long history together has made them close friends obviously, not only in the battlefield or on the bridge of a starship, but also in private and in the exercise chamber. Going through hardship together forges friendships that can not be easily broken.

"... Ehh ... Twenty-five." She lets out a wild grunt as she moved back, and then up again, her well trained abdomen seemed to have blocked out the burning sensation an untrained person doing these exercises would feel after the first few reps. She keeps going for a while, explicitly wanting to strain herself until she feels her muscles have worked accordingly. After several dozen of more slow reps, she lets herself drop down, looking up at Gidean.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, Giddy."

Her raspy voice sounded slightly more mellow today, as if her uneasiness has softened her throat. Or maybe, it was the Telerian milk. Who knows?

"I don't know either, Jan. What are you feeling?"

"Helpless. Weak. Like a mouse, without eyes, ears and nose."

"Ok, now I know that you're shitting me..." he laughed slightly as he heard her say that. Jan Hunter was the toughest bred he ever learned to know in his life. Never had he even heard her speak so demeaning of herself.

"I'm not shitting you. It's plain dismal."

"Damnit, Jan. We'll get them back and I'm sure Annie will..."

"...make it?" the Captain responded with a slight strain on her facial expressions. Her muscles were tensed, her face, normally in neutral state of expression, now was slightly hardened, sweat and a slightly wrinkled nose showing her anger.

"I shouldn't have allowed them on that freighter in the first place!" she yelled.

"Look, Jan. We've been a lot together and we both know that you couldn't have known..." Spunktry let go of her ankles and Hunter sat up, her face brought close to his.

"The hell I couldn't have known." The words were almost spat out. A silence filled the room. An uneasy silence, loaded with tension.

"You do remember how we had it, right? Countless of Campaigns. Rigel, Venati, Xai-Fahar, Tau Ceti! We were the most successful special-op team in the history of the Concubine wars of Benar VII. The Telerians, the Breen, even the Jem'Hadar and the Borg. We were silent, stealthy. We had warrior instinct. A look in someone's eyes and we could tell whether someone had it in him to kill or not. Even through the refrigerating suits of the Breen, their body languages could tell us how they would most probably react to offense. We were masters of anticipation and instinct. And look at me now."

Gidean, having listened all the while, suddenly butted in with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Come on," he slowly uttered, a tone of confrontation in his voice. "You can't compare the whims of our past with what's happening right now."

"Can't I, Giddy? I once trusted my instinct." She went on, an apparent rage had lodged itself in her pained mind. As her thoughts dwelled on Annie, her old Field Medic Ben and those still on that freighter, her virtually unflinching confidence dwindled.

"I've let myself be misled by an ambush with such a level of transparence a first year military field cadet would regard with suspicion. It's like a doctor mistaking a case of Hemorrhoids with Pregnancy."

Spunktry couldn't help but slightly draw a laugh at that remark. He slapped her on the knee and shook his head.

"Do you think that's funny, damnit?"

"Oh no... no..." he waved both hands in front of her... "Wait... Yes, I do. You know why?"

Jan Hunter gave Mr. Spunktry one of the most vile looks she could muster, even in this state. Her eyes filled with an unsettling gloom.

"No. Why?"

"Because you..." his finger traveled to point at her, then theatrically moved it back to point at himself.

"...and me..." his hand quickly travels to run through his short, spiky hair.

"...are gettin' way to old for this shit..."

Hunter looked up from where she sat, slowly moving her head to face Gidean. She lowered both eyebrows in a slightly ridiculing gaze. Then, out of the blue, as if they were wired together, both of them started to laugh simultaneously. The sound of their cackling laughs were heard throughout the exercise room. Noise traveled well in their, considering it used to be a storage room for medical and tactical supplies, such as substances that are hard to replicate, like some types of medicine, bio-neural gel packs and rechargeable power cells for the Starfleet standard issue concussion rifle. It was the Captain herself that thought it to be useful to have an extended exercise ground on the ship, not only for her old team members, but for the entire crew to be able to train and get rid of latent aggressive feelings. One might rather channel them to a boxing ball or a crunching mat.

The laughter drew the other attendants' concentration away from the exercise machines for a while, until it abruptly stopped.

"Hahhahaha.. Ok. We're due in the bridge, but we stink like Targ wool. Go shower and be there in 15."

"Affirmative, Captain... And Jan..." he said, for one last moment before she sped out of the room towards her quarters.

"Yes, Giddy?"

"You may be a captain now, but you're still one tough cookie. You'll get them back before you realize it."

"Let's hope so." She disappeared through the door. Gidean kept sitting there for a moment, shaking his head, then turning to the wall mounted replicator. Flipping to his feet acrobatically, he whistled a tune before tapping one of the buttons on the Replicator. Vocalize Entry.

"One glass of water. Three degrees centigrade."

The matter/energy resequencer pad in the wall cavity that people call 'the replicator' suddenly started to whir, a strange sound accompanied by the resequencing of atoms. It shaped a glass, with the water already in it. Sometimes, Gidean wondered what was the use of it all. Why not simply put a glass underneath it and let it fill up? He didn't complain. As soon as the water completely materialized, his hand wrapped around the glass and lifted it to his mouth, where he downed the 30 centiliters of water in one single drink. He put it down on the pad, then pressed a button to the side. Desequencer (Recycle). On his manual command, the resequenced Silicium and Oxygen that made up the glass was broken down to its elementary building blocks of quarks and mesons, then suddenly pulled back in the shape of energy through the power conduit. Treasure of modern technology indeed.

USS Basileia, Mess Hall, October 12, 10.50 hours

The mess hall was, as usual, a well of activities aboard the Basileia. Many crewmembers of many different shifts were sitting and walking around, the four wall mounted replicators were almost always accompanied by several lines of impatient crewmembers trying to pull a lunch or a snack from them. The Basileia was a rather luxurious ship, but with luxury comes higher routine ambitions. Now everyone wants a little bowl with high grade vegetables with his or her meal and everybody wants a refined little slab of ket-jap with his or her ajam or nasi goreng. And for that, the rows before the replicators grow and grow. Luckily, for old-fashioned but exquisite gastronomic performance, there is the Chef. A corpulent man with a big mustache, a person one would expect to see in a Pizzeria. What odd appearance he had was only mirrored by his extreme hearty and gentle nature. Now all four courses were completed in full, waiting in the pans for people to put a meal on their plates, he stepped out from behind his galley and rubbed his big hands together, a playful laugh exiting his mouth as he stepped towards a man, sitting. Lieutenant Commander Dick Hardy was buried, as usual, in a massive load of data pads.

"Oy, Lieutenant. How are you doing today?" he asked and friendly that he is, he gives him a portion of his delicious Cordon Bleu.

"Thank you, Chef. You're the best. But why don't you remember that it's lieutenant commander?" Hardy suppressed a slight grin.

"That's too long for mi mouth, mi-boy. Lieutenant is easier on the throat." He tapped him on the back with quite some force and then walked about to sit across from him, the seat momentarily cringing under his weight. "Ahhmm. "

The sensation of sitting for a moment was quite pleasant.

"Well then at least call me Commander." Hardy whined. A silence ensued, Hardy moved back to his pads, and the Chef looked at him, silent, momentarily unsure what to think of it. Hardy didn't take too long to notice the silence that befell his table and slowly looked up at the corpulent Chef's jolly face. He was playing with the left side of his mustache, raising his eyebrow, his eyes narrowed to slits in a jolly smile. Hardy blinked several times and the corners of his mouth drew outward in a smile...

"Makes me feel better."

They both laughed and Hardy started to eat the Cordon Bleu quickly, looking at the time and noticing that he's due in Engineering.

"Ey, Hardy," the Chef spoke, tilting his head to the side. "You're very good with replicators, I noticed. The one on mi quarters is busted again. Very annoying. Can I press you to take a look at it this evening?"

"Sure, Chef. I'll be glad to. I think I can spare 15 minutes." He smiled and stood up.

"My Warp Core awaits. Sorry mate."

"Heh heh. Go ahead Hardy. I'll have a nice pêche-melba standing ready for you when you visit me this evening." He knew Dick Hardy liked that type of dessert.

"You're my God, Chef. Later." Hardy nothing short of ran out of the mess, Chef looked at it with a raised eyebrow and rubbed his hands again, another audible grin escaping him. He stood up, getting back behind the galley counter, this time to eat a bit himself, but before he disappeared behind his pots and pans, he looked out through the three large mess hall windows, seeing the white stardust draw lines in the black of space. He lets out a slight sigh for a moment and then disappeared in the galley.

USS Basileia, Astrometrics Lab, October 12, 11.02 hours

The Astrometrics Lab or Astrophysics Detail on board of the USS Basileia was notorious for its high calculative ability. Countless of consoles with buttons in many color codes were displayed throughout the room, along with an entire wall mounted with viewscreens. Spatial grids were shown. Anomalies and their placement throughout multiple spatial sectors, The tools to make excellent starcharts were all in the telemetrics console. One of the first multi-ExaQuad computer systems in Starfleet, to store the incredible amounts of data needed on deep space missions. Somehow, with all these resources aboard, it was strange that all it had been used for as of yet was diplomatic relations.

Ensign Rachel LeJeune was an incredibly well educated specialist on quantumphysics and spatial harmonics. A mind that was wired to work in multi-dimensions. A mind that would be worth its weight in liquid Latinum.

Her fingers rattle over the console controls, trying to ascertain a system of coordinates.

Suddenly, Captain Jan Hunter came barging in, her muscular form now fitted in clean clothes and finished with a slight touch of perfume. She stopped half way and looked Rachel right in the eyes, an unnerving habit of the Captain, that often sends people who do not know her well into distress. Her deep black eyes could be very intimidating.

"Did you call for me, Ensign?"

The Ensign nodded to her and slightly smiled.

"Yes, sir. I called for you. You wanted Astrophysics to inform you when we have a possible lead on where the Tellarites are going?"

"Yes, why. Did you find them?" This spurted the Captain's interest, as she went to stand next to LeJeune, looking over her shoulder at the console, then at the projected sector on the viewscreen.

"No, we didn't find them, but..." she continued, walking towards a slightly scratched Data Pad that lied on top of the console, grabbing it and showing it to Captain Hunter.

"These coordinates were carried by Mr. and Ms. Olsen. This pad was received from the escape pod. It was reasonable to think that they managed to tap into their system before they escaped. Too bad they are still recovering. They might be able to tell us more."

"The doctor will wake up Mr. Olsen within the hour, Ensign. Don't worry. Go on."

"Take a look, Captain."

The captaintook the Data Pad and looked at it, especially the set of coordinates. She raised her eyebrow.

VDest: RDV-t: DT-7(ρ 2.81 ' Φ .9721 ' θ.1502)

She raised her eyebrow slightly, not really making heads or tails of it.

"Are these coordinates?" a disgruntled Captain asked, looking them over.

"Yes, Captain. Let me explain." She stood next to the captain, pointing at the screen of the Data Pad.

"Starfleet uses two types of coordinate spacing. The first is the usual grid vector location or GVL, in which coordinates are cubically ordered with a set of three coordinates. We use it for short range travel and sometimes to locate targets in a battle. Then, there is another type of location Starfleet uses for deep space travel, which is the Galactic Cylinder or GC Location. That means a point in space is defined by three other coordinates: the height and the diameter of the cylinder and the angle with the Sol-vector. Clockwise, of course." Her fingers rattle over the console controls, in order to finish her lecture.

"This Tellarite freighter uses another system. One I have never seen before. The reason for that is because this system is dependant on spatial location and in general requires not three, but four coordinates. It is a spherical coordinates system in which the center of the circle is "DT-7", a certain system in this galaxy, probably somewhere nearby. ρ is the radius of the sphere and Φ and θ are gradients to specify the location on this sphere. And then the coordinates of the system, but those are missing. So in fact, we're talking about 6 coordinates instead of four. It's rather basic mathematics." She giggled oddly and looked at the Captain.

"So..." the Captain tried to punch through her lack of understanding, "...what you are saying is that wherever they are going is 2.81 units, probably lightyears or parsecs, away from this DT-7?"

"Very good, Captain." DeJeune giggled and rubbed her fingers together. "I think they used this type of spatial location in regard of safety. One could almost take a random point in space for these spherical coordinates and no one would be able to know where the hell they are going."

The only thing the captain lets be heard of herself is yet another grunt. She didn't concern herself too much with the young woman's Techno-babbles, but she seemed to have it figured out pretty well.

"Ok, ok. That's good enough for me. Let someone worm through the Federation database and find something with the name DT-7. Or if there has ever been anyone using these types of coordinates."

"Aye aye ma'am. I'll get on it myself." She said. The captain turned to her one more time, letting go a slight grin. "Good." She then walked out quickly, moving towards the bridge in a quick pace. She needed to be there immediately, but then when she reached the corridor, she had a quick change or mind. Going left instead of right. She moved towards the second turbolift, onward to the infirmary. She wanted to know what Ben had to say and she wanted to know now.

USS Basileia, Infirmary, October 12, 11.25 hours

The doors to the infirmary slid open rather quickly as the Captain, in her usual quick strides, walked in. She immediately got to the point, as she watched a Dinox bent over Annie Olsen. She stood still in the middle of the Infirmary, which had quite some features of a zoo, with all those cages. It's true that Denobulans have their unique way of ensuring their Crew's health. She didn't pay it much heed anymore, only looking to the side at the chirping of a strange little creature in a round cage. She snapped her gaze towards Dinox and folded her arms over one another.

"Doctor. Are you ready to wake up Ben?"

He quickly turned about as he assessed how serious she was.

"I vouched for him getting at least 14 hours of undisturbed rest..."

"...and it's been over 13. I think he will live, doctor." She grunted, a sign of her meaning business.

The Denobulan, who didn't particularly enjoy making concessions when it came to medical issues. He sighed slightly and moved his hand inside of a drawer, where he got himself a hypospray. Another hand moved, without looking at his action, towards a case with several medicinal pallets inside. He then suddenly turned about to view what he was doing. A mild stimulant. His hand moved the pallet into the chamber of the hypospray and twirled it around to let the tip face upwards. A theatrical stride towards the lying Ben Olsen and then he put it to his neck, unleashing – with the slight sound of leaking air – the compound into the main artery in his neck.

It wasn't long now, before activity was seen upon Mr. Olsen's face. First, his eyelids slightly moved, then suddenly, his mouth opened to draw a breath and his eyes flare open, looking around the room quickly, very disoriented. Looking up he would see the captain's face, which was slightly later joined by that of Dinox.

"Hey Ben. How are you doing, my boy?"

"Jan? Where...?"

"In the infirmary, Ben. You're ok and..."

"Annie! Where is Annie?" He suddenly moved up, only to feel two hands, one of Jan and one of Dinox, pressing him back down on the bench.

"Relax, Ben. Her case is severe, but she's responding well to my treatment. Also, the weapon hit has been treated successfully," Dinox uttered with a soft smile on his face. His eerie lightblue eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he heard himself say that.

"It will take three full days of total rest and the constant attention of my medical staff, but I am confident that she will make a full recovery. It will only take time."

"Thank... god." His eyes closed. Hunter's hand moved towards Ben Olsen's forehead, giving him a soft tap and then stroking it gently.

"Benny. You can have all the rest you want, but I need to ask you a few questions right now."

A sigh escaped the young man's lips and he lied down on the sickbed calmly. He had a splitting headache still, and looked at the doctor for a moment. "Can I have a painkiller? My head's killing me."

A quick nod came from the doctor as he would prep another hypospray. He would softly press it against the young man's neck, unleashing a mild neuro-sedative into his system.

"Go right ahead, Cap'n." He sighed slightly, thinking back about what happened in the brig.

"Tell me, for a moment, what exactly happened from the point on when you beamed out?" Captain Hunter asked, supporting his head slightly as she put a pillow underneath. He weakly looked to the side, though a glimmer in his eyes was all the token of appreciation she needed to see.

"We... beamed over... rematerialized in the... middle of a cargo hold. I don't know how. It all... happened very fast. These Tellarites were all... around us in less than ten seconds, as if they knew exactly where we were coming. Then... we felt a shockwave rock the ship... We thought it was weaponsfire..."

"That's right, Benny. Cloaked ships," the Captain slightly smiled. "We didn't even see them before they shot and blew out our entire deflector at their first try... Go on, son."

"We were put in a holding pen. Eight Cells... Everyone got one, and Annie and myself got one. I... tended to her, kept her alive. There was severe radiation leaking from... somewhere inside the freighter. Selar... attempted to use the shield emitter on ... his hazard suit, to get through the forcefields of his cell. He ... got it after a long time and got the rest ... of us out. We patched into ... manifest to seek escape ships, found some weird coordinates ... When we were there, trying to circumvent security on ... escape pods... Tellarites were on to us... Firefight... Thei managed to open one Pod, then ... Weatherby ordered me and... my sister in it and cut us loose from... freighter."

He moved his hand up to rub his head. It hurt quite bad and any wayward attempt of concentration only made it worse. The captain gently put her hand on his chest and leant down a bit, speaking close to his ear.

"Benny. I need you to listen very carefully. It's very important that you try to remember if you saw it somewhere. DT-7. It's a system from the Tellarite Database. I need to know what system it is. Do you perhaps know what it is?"

Benny closed his eyes. He did not know.

"I'm sorry, captain."

"It's Okay, son. Get some rest." She forced a slight smile on her face and turned around, to eye Dinox. "Take care of them for me."

"Aye, ma'am."

She stepped around him and made her way out of the door. Suddenly, a bleep was heard from her comm-badge. "Sybok to Captain Hunter. I have joined Ensign DeJeune in Astrometrics. DT-7, captain. I know where it stands for."

She moved her right hand to intercept it, tapping it very satisfied by hearing this. "Really? What is it?"

Sybok started walking out of astrometrics, DeJeune looking after him with a raised eyebrow. She wasn't really used to the way Vulcans acted and leaving without a single word was not something she took politely.

"Yeah, goodbye, pointy..." she mumbled, immediately making Sybok turn around.

"You do realize, Ensign, that these ears serve more purpose than providing additional aesthetics... I suggest you keep your opinions of me very silent."

She gulped and turned back towards her telemetry console in shame.

"Sybok?" the Captain responded through the comm, while on the way to the bridge.

"DT-7 is a Starfleet designation, captain. The reason we could not find it is because it is 150 years old. I have been one of the first Vulcans in the service of Starfleet and if my memory serves me well, we have been to DT-7 once. It is not a star or starsystem either."

"Well then, relieve the suspense from my already weary shoulders, Commander. What is it?"

A short silence befell them both as she made her way to Turbolift 1. The one that lead to the bridge.

"It is the Paulson Nebula, Captain."

USS Basileia, Bridge, 11.40 hours.

The turbolift door zooms open with the familiar sound of puffing air, revealing two individuals inside; Commander Sybok and Captain Hunter. They both walk out, shoulder to shoulder, where they separate two meters furtheron, Sybok moving to the right, the Tactical Console and Hunter straightforward around that console, down the stairs to the captain's chair. She sat down and leant back in it for a while. A typical case of learned-to-love it was. The chair became more comfy the longer and the more often she sat in it. It's insidious.

"I'll be damned. The Paulson nebula," she repeated, her teeth slightly gritted.

"Are these bastards smart from birth or did they drunk a potion?" She rammed her hand on the armrest rather powerfully. She was pissed.

"Set a course. Now!" Iris Cole immediately worked with the coordinates, which were converted by DeJeune from the peculiar spherical location system to normal coordinates. It was an old fact that in Starfleet science records, the placement of a nebula – its center – is located at its center of mass. In an evenly distributed nebula, that would be somewhere close to the exact middle, but the Paulson Nebula is erratic, its mass/momentum center being about three quarters pointed towards the Galactic mean. It was about 6.7 lightyears across at most and a sphere with a 2.81 lightyear radius with the designated spherical coordinates, would have the coordinates lying just outside the upper border of the nebula. The sector was displayed on the Bridge screen for a while.

"That location seems plausible. Outside in normal space, with the ability to contact ones allies, but also two minutes away from a nebula that blocks all outgoing communications. According to Federation records, it has been the supposed playground for criminals; especially dealers and smugglers." Sybok concluded, then looked at Jan for a moment.

"Hmm. Almost every impairing anomaly in the galaxy is used by people who don't want their businesses to blow wide in the open. The Bassen Rift, the ... Regula Badlands. Name your hot spot." The captain made herself comfortable, though the fate of her lost men was still very clearly in her mind.

"Set a course, Miss Cole, take us there. Maximum warp. And when I say Maximum, I mean Maximum. These bastards will not have the time to depart from there, we'll make sure of that." A grunt escaped her lips.

Just as Iris was about to heed the Captain's call, a sound was emitted by the general comm stream. A feed coming from engineering. "Ma'am. Lieutenant Commander Hardy here. We might have a problem," he said, a tone in his voice clearly illustrating that he was serious about it.

"What is it Hardy?" the Captain asked, with a slightly lowered eyebrow. She looked over her shoulder into the comm-feed image.

"The magneton sweep is now busy in the aft compartments of the vessel. The aft shuttlebays, the Bussard intakes. But, there is something strange about the scan."

"Yes?" the Captain grunted, rubbing her hands together. They were slightly cold.

"The magneton sweep is not limited to the inners of the ship. Its 'shadows' reach a few hundred meters outside of our bulkheads. They are lighting something up that moves exactly parallel to us."

"An anomaly?" she asked.

"An anomaly that matches our speed and course exact to the millimeter?"

"I'll be damned.." she widened her eyes and snapped her gaze towards Sybok. "It's a cloaked vessel. Belay my last order, Miss Cole. Drop out of warp. Immediately."

"Yes, Captain."

Just a few moments later, the sleek hull of the proud starship USS Basileia would contract, the inertial dampers and integrity field countering from the torsion of dropping out of warp. When the six powerful impulse engines kick in, a shudder goes through the entire vessel. It was clear that it was made for quick acceleration and maneuverability.

"Raise shields and power up weapons. This time I'm not going to be fooled or surprised." Her calm face had converted into a hardened combative glare over a few seconds. She sat up and gritted her teeth, focusing all the irritation of her lost and abducted crewmembers upon the magneton echo. "We know you are there..." she mumbled into herself.

She didn't have to wait long; in fact, she didn't have to wait at all, for at the very moment that her ship dropped out of warp, the magneton echo did the same thing. Then, it suddenly visualized, the same sleek, dark form from before became visible, but this time, it was a little bit bigger. The ship that appeared was five hundred meters long, almost as long as the entire USS Basileia.

"Their weapons are powered and ..."

Suddenly, the entire ship was rocked violently as the dark vessel immediately opened fire. This time, the strength of attack was a lot greater. Even before the captain could issue an evasive maneuver, no less than four high yield Plasma Torpedoes slammed into the hull. Closely after, over a dozen disruptor hits singed the shields, making it light up green. The cohesive field of EM energy fluctuated violently, sending several quadrants of it inert for just a moment, the bridge, the phaser strips and the dorsal fore torpedo launcher were targeted, as well as several impacts right on the bussard ram scoops. Powerful sparks were sent throughout the entire bridge and the ship seemed to veer to the left momentarily. And yes, the concussive force of the powerful torpedo impacts caused the ship to be sent of course for about a few hundred meters. A sudden discharge in the sensory console slammed right into Ensign Bowling, who was sent right over the railing and landed next to the Captain's chair. Jan Hunter jolted up and knelt, to help the young man up. She grunted towards Sybok.

"Fire at Will! Medical teams to the bridge!"

She gritted her teeth in anger and waited for the medics. Two bridge crewmembers were injured and that ship really packed a hell of a punch. A sudden turnaround caused the captain to have to lean against the side of the chair for a while.

"Those sons of bitches are making me incredibly pissed now. Spunktryyyy! Reflect my anger and burn my name in their hull with our phasers!"

He slightly grinned and hopped over the second diagnostic bank, landing next to sybok and taking control of all front phaser strips.

"Quantum Torpedoes locked."

"Phasers ready, Jan."

"FIRE!"

The USS Basileia, after having received violent weapons fire, had its shielding virtually down. Without their main deflector, they were still substantially weaker than they would be when it was on. Especially their shields suffered from it. The weapons however responded with all the power they could muster. The powerful Type XI phasers slammed into the shielding of the enemy craft, no less than three beams at once, converging on the same spot underneath a shield grid that had the most power diverted to it. It was only logical to assume that some important system was lodged underneath it.

Only a few seconds later, each front torpedo bay spewed out two quantum torpedoes, of which all six shot straight forward, searing through the cold space towards the vile, secretive aggressor. Visual was that he attempted to cloak again, The furthest tips of the craft starting to disperse into the background. What followed however, god could not even cloak. The barrage of quantum torpedoes collided with the shielding of the craft, which on its own proved quite powerful. The accumulated shock of the zero point energy discharges the quantum torpedoes explosions emit, caused the ship to be tossed almost half a kilometer away, a gap in its aft hull, yet somehow, the vessel was completely able to once more charge up its warp coils.

"All successful hits captain. Their cloaking device and their weapons have been damaged. But, they are preparing to jump back to warp."

"What? What are they doing?" an annoyed and irritated captain exclaimed as she saw, on the viewscreen, how the craft suddenly had its warp nodes charge, lighting up.

"Target their nacelles and put a tractor beam on them. We are getting some answers right now."

Captain Jan Hunter and First Commander Spunktry looked back at one another. Gidean could see the anger in his friends eyes. She moved down upon the captain's chair, with a lot to ponder about. Ever from the start of this assignment, things took one bad turn after another. Her hand seemed to tighten around the armrest for a while, the tendons in the back of her hand visibly tensing up. However, now, there might be a chance to learn something about what is going on. A sudden burst of condensed energy emanated from the Basileia's phaser strips, two simultaneous beams that cut through the enemy's warp engines powerfully, leaving a wake of torn metal and destroyed couplings. The greenish light of the Basileia's tractor beam locked onto the vessel's hull..

"These renegades are really and I mean really... getting on my nerves."

She shifted her weight slightly towards the side, her eyes turning back to gaze upon the viewscreen. It showed the damaged vessel, being adrift, its impulse engines and deflector lost the struggle to the sophisticated tractor beam.

Captain Jan Hunter narrowed her eyes upon the image of a mouse held by the tail, attempting futilely to escape her clutches.

"I want my crewmembers back," she muttered to herself.

To Be Concluded

END OF EPISODE 1