"What's your plan, Steve?" Tony asked. Now that they were alone, Tony felt like he could call his commander by his REAL name.
Kirk relaxed a little and let the pain show through his face a little more. He opened his eyes and turned to his friend. "We're going to transport those torpedos into the Reman warship, but we need to put them on a delayed charge. Normally, we could have just done that through the weapons console..."
"...but it's a burned out mess." Tony finished. "So, we have to do it manually. I get it." Tony smiled and nodded. This just might work.
"Exactly...but, we have to finish this before they can see what we're doing. I don't want them to have the opportunity to screw this up." The lift shook again. Stephen winced as he was forced to put pressure on his broken leg to remain standing.
"You really ought to get that looked at. I can manage this." Tony offered sympathetically. Suddenly, Steve wasn't the inexperienced too-rapidly-promoted-for-his-own-good commander any more. Tony now saw him as his old Academy buddy... and he was hurting.
"Thanks for the offer, Tony." Stephen replied. "I'll get it looked at when we have time. How are you doing?"
"Knees are a little achy, but I'm good."
Stephen nodded. "Good. I may need to lean on you before this is over." Kirk smiled...he was only half kidding. "Now comes the not so pleasant part." Kirk's face grew grim. He tapped his comm badge. "Kirk to engineering."
A few moments later, the badge popped. "Kelly here, Commander." He sounded out of breath and coughed.
"What's your status, Leiutenant?"
"It's a mess down here, Commander." He replied. "We've got smoke everywhere. Most of the systems have completely burned out. I've got a lot of casualties, too. I count at least three dead and three unconscious. The doc's down here trying to patch us up. Did we win?"
"Not yet." Kirk replied quickly. "But we're about to. You need to get some kind of warp drive working." The doors to the turbolift opened. Straight ahead, they could see the large double doors to the cargo bay.
"Aye, aye, Commander." Kelly's voice sounded weary.
"Just stay with me for a few more minutes, Tom. This part will be over soon. Kirk out." He tapped his badge again.
The lights in the hall wavered in intensity as they slowly made for the cargo bay. The doors opened to reveal a mess of equipment and boxes. The numerous jolts must have knocked things around. So much for securing our cargo, Kirk thought. He limped over to the transporter contols. Tony opened his small computing device and started looking for data on the new high-yield quantum torpedos. Kirk used the transporter controls to locate the torpedos in the main launch bay. After several precious seconds of button punching, Kirk finally had the location on the transporter control. With a wave of his hand, the large, white circular pad in the cargo bay began to glisten with sparkling lights. After the hum of electricity subsided and the lights vanished, there were nine, neatly stacked high-yield quantum torpedos on racks atop the pad.
"Got 'em." Kirk said finally. "Tony, I need you to program a ten second delay before detonation. Try to link that to some kind of signal so we can trigger them all at once." Kirk looked over the giant, black, ovoid casings. They were roughly twice as large as a standard torpedo, but contained over five times the firepower.
"I will as soon as I can get the data charts for these new torpedos." Kirk examined the nearest torpedo more closely, and saw the access panel. "I have to link with our computer and it's going really...ah...there it is." Hobbling over to an access panel near the door, Kirk pulled out a tool, walked back to the torpedo, and started removing the panel. "Hang on a sec while I figure out what I'm doing." Tony'e eyes never looked up from his small screen. "Okay...got it. We need to get the access panel off first." Tony looked up. "You need a..." then noticed Stephen was already removing a panel.
Kirk smiled back at his friend. "I figured this part out. What's next?" The access panel popped open with the last screw removed. Inside, there was a smaller panel along with a keypad.
Tony pressed a few more buttons while Stephen started opening other torpedos. "Okay...we need to get to the guidance module. We can either program them one at a time...or..." Tony had another thought. "Hey...we'll do that instead. I have a better idea. Open one of the interior system panels. Go back to that first one." Kirk did as instructed. Tony read from the system schematics on his tricorder. "Type the following number on the keypad: 1, 5, 3, 6, 9, 0 then press 'Commit'"
Kirk pressed the numbers as Tony read them. "Okay." He pressed 'Commit'. The smaller panel opened to reveal a number of bluish colored, rectangular isolinear chips in numbered banks. "I'm staring at a bunch of isolinear chips."
"Good," Tony replied. "Hand me the chip that's in bank zero, three." Kirk removed it and tossed it to Leiutenant Moreaux. Tony popped the chip into the side of his tricorder. He began pressing buttons on the tricorder like mad. "Instead of going from torpedo to torpedo and use the keypad to reprogram each one, I'm going to use the configuration program on this chip to make the necessary changes. I'll save the new configuration, then we can just copy it from chip to chip."
"Sounds like a plan, Tony." Kirk wasn't much into computer programming, so he figured he'd let Tony do what he does best.
Tony chuckled. "You always did have to copy my answers in our System Development classes. Start getting the chips out of those other torpedos...SIR."
Stephen realized Tony was in his element now. He let the sarcastic 'SIR' slide. He started opening the access panels and retrieving the necessary chips. His comm badge popped. "Bridge to Commander Kirk." It was T'Nia's voice.
He tapped his badge. "Kirk here. What's up, T'Nia?"
"I'm registering increased power levels on the Rapier. It would seem they have impulse power back. It would be logical to assume their sensors will return shortly."
Kirk tapped his badge again. "Bristol, this is Kirk."
The badge popped again. "Ensign Bristol here, Sir." There was more than a hint of nervousness in his voice.
"Stay high and off the Rapier's starboard side, okay?" Kirk tried to sound calm, but he knew the clock was ticking down.
"I've been doing that, Sir. They've been trying to turn using their maneuvering thrusters. I guess they've been trying to look for us. I've been keeping us out of their line of sight."
"Good man, Bristol. Keep up the good work. We're almost done here. Kirk out."
Tony was excited. "I got it! I fixed the program. All I have to do is send a signal from my tricorder and they'll blow ten seconds later!"
Kirk's smile was wide. "Good job, Leiutenant Moreaux! Let's get to it. We're running out of time." They began swapping chips like some kind of juggling act. As Tony finished with the last chip. he walked up to the transporter pad and handed it to Stephen. He grabbed the tool and started closing the access panels. Kirk patted him on the back. "You're a good man, Tony. I don't care WHAT Box says about you." He headed over to the transporter controls and started looking for places on the Rapier to put his new bombs.
"Whatever..." Tony said with a smile. He secured the last panel. "They're all on."
Kirk's comm badge popped again. "Commander Kirk," it was T'Nia's voice again. "their sensors are back online."
Kirk found his location, deep in the heart of the enemy vessel. He tapped his badge. "Understood." He tapped his badge again. "Kirk to Bristol...get us out of here, full impulse power. Tangent off their starboard side."
His badge popped. "Aye, aye, Sir."
Kirk turned to Tony. "Start the countdown."
Tony stepped off the pad and pressed a button on his tricorder.
"Ten"
"Nine"
"Eight" Kirk started pressing buttons to lock the location into the transporter.
"Seven"
"Six" With a wave of his hand, shimmering lights encircled the newly programmed torpedos.
"Five"
"Four" The torpedos disappeared from the cargo bay.
Kirk's badge popped again. It was T'Nia. "Commander Kirk, they have come around and are locking their weapons."
"Three"
Another pop. "Commander, this is Kelly. I got you partial warp power from the port nacell."
"Thank God!" Kirk replied. He tapped his badge. "Kirk to Bristol...go to warp! Get us out of here!" Stephen pressed a button on the transporter console so he could see what the bridge viewscreen was showing. The Rapier was pointed straight at them, but was getting gradually smaller.
"Two!"
"Aye, aye!" Bristol replied. The ship began to hum.
"One!"
In the background, Kirk could hear T'Nia's voice saying the Reman ship had fired. He looked at the screen and saw three green balls of light coming at them, but it was too late. Stars elongated to rays of light and the ship went to warp.
"NOW!" Tony yelled. They both looked at the small view screen on the console. Moments after he spoke, they saw a small explosion in the area where the Rapier had been, but they were too far away to make any details.
"Yeah!" They both cheered as they hugged each other. Unknown to them at the time, the rest of the crew had been looking at monitors of their own. As the remains of the Rapier exploded, they cheered as well.