The impact of the Orion gunboat against the bird of prey was the opportunity Rick Eisler was looking for.
At his direction, phase cannon fire from Endeavour's guns flashed out, carving chunks of armor from the wounded command ship and slicing into the superstructure. Blue-green fire erupted from the port nacelle as warp plasma ignited under the scorching heat and, mere seconds later, the nacelle itself exploded. Already crippled, the bird of prey reeled under the assault as the last of Endeavour's Mark V torpedoes slammed into it, detonating with incandescent flashes that ripped into its hull and sent armor plating tumbling through the darkness. Secondary explosions ravaged the ship and, without hesitation, Eisler ordered a second salvo of torpedoes. Three Mark IVs struck the tumbling bird of prey amidships and it vanished in a brilliant fireball.
The trio of Romulan warships closest to Endeavour went evasive almost immediately, maneuvering to regroup outside of the range of the Starfleet vessel's heavier weapons. Staring at the sensor feed installed on his TAC board, Rick frowned at their sudden actions and noted the distant fourth bird of prey shifting its trajectory, clearly intending to join the trio.
"Damage report!" Tucker ordered, his voice perfectly pitched and composed; for all of the danger they were in, he sounded as calm as he ever had. Despite his disapproval of the inappropriate relationship between the captain and the XO, Rick mentally revised his opinion upward of Tucker's command abilities. The captain's ability to maintain an image of absolute control in the midst of a firefight had a powerfully calming effect on the junior officers; a frightened officer was a useless officer.
"Shields are still down," Master Chief Petty Officer Mackenzie responded almost instantly. He too was a picture of poise in the face of a storm; although in the COB's case, Eisler assumed it was more the result of shock. "Hull plating at seventy percent but there are breaches on decks C and D; damage control teams are working on them." Mackenzie paused briefly before continuing, his eyes never leaving his board. "Engineering is reporting a radiation leak; Commander Drahn is trying to lock it down." Out of the corner of his eye, Rick saw Captain Tucker frown.
The report was good news - no, it was amazing news that Endeavour remained so battle-ready despite the pounding they had taken. Ignoring the mostly negligible help from the Boomers and the gunboat, Endeavour had almost single-handedly taken on seven Romulan birds of prey, destroying three, including a command ship, and damaging the other four without suffering significant casualties herself. Enterprise had very nearly been destroyed facing four of these ships and, despite the technological upgrades that had been installed aboard Endeavour, it defied comprehension that the engagement had been so one-sided.
It was almost as if the Romulans wanted these ships to be destroyed.
"Weapons?" the captain inquired; Rick was already highlighting the closest of the four Romulans as the primary target. It was a common misconception that he controlled all of the weapon systems from his station; in reality, he was more of a manager with override capability. He would select a primary target and the weapon systems officer - currently Chief Petty Officer Luckabaugh - would focus on killing that target from his station in the Armory; it was a policy that had been instituted by Starfleet at the suggestion of Lieutenant Commander Reed several weeks before Elysium. Borne out of Reed's experiences in the Expanse, the new system allowed the senior tactical officer to focus on the larger picture.
"Port cannons one and three are out," Rick replied. The primary target - Target Delta - was still attempting to get out of Endeavour's range but was on the starboard side; three phase cannon bursts converged upon the ship, punching through the shields to burn a jagged scar across the smaller ship's hull. It twisted into a spiraling dive meant to confuse the targeting computers. "Aft cannons are damaged but Luckabaugh has a team on it," he continued his report as he input additional commands and suggested revised targeting solutions. "Mark Fives have been exhausted," Rick finished.
"T'Pol?" Tucker didn't elaborate, but the Vulcan seemed to already know what he was going to ask. She had been doing that a lot, actually.
"The first ships will be reaching the warp threshold in approximately four point seven six minutes." The Vulcan commander paused briefly during her report but it was enough of a hesitation to be noticed. "I am detecting four additional vessels on approach; estimated time of arrival is seven point two four minutes." She seemed to anticipate Captain Tucker's next question. "I am unable to identify their warp signatures."
"Keep your eye on 'em," the captain said; it sounded more like a request than an order, but she nodded anyway. "Maybe Commodore Archer got us some reinforcements after all." From the tone of his voice, Tucker didn't sound as if he thought that likely. Returning his eyes to the TAC board, Eisler frowned as the four Romulans reoriented themselves on Endeavour; they were on the very edge of optimal weapon range and seemed to know it. Letting the WSO pick the targets, he cycled through all of his tactical scans, growing more and more troubled as he studied them. None of this made sense.
Strategically, the Vigrid system was ideally situated for a force intending to move against Terran interests. The system itself was situated on a nexus of "warp highways," naturally occurring routes in which warp travel was substantially faster than normal, something that Rick had never even heard of until the captain's last debriefing. Apparently distinct from wormholes in a way that Eisler realized he couldn't possibly comprehend, the highways had reduced the normal month-long trip required to reach Thor's Cradle from Starbase-1 to just over a standard week. Reducing warp theory to layman's terms, Tucker had likened the warp highways to the slidewalks that littered spaceports: a person walking upon one moved far more quickly than if that person walked beside the moving walkway. Knowing this detail made the importance of the system clear.
For the Romulans, taking Thor's Cradle was not just a sound strategic move: it was an essential one.
And yet, despite that, the Romulan strategy made little sense. By openly attacking the system in this way, they were tipping their hand far too early. Any survivors of the battle - and the chances were high that there would be survivors - would be sure to pass on the revelation that it was indeed the Romulans who were responsible for the hit-and-fade attacks on supply convoys that had been plaguing the Boomers since the war had begun. It wasn't the Orion Syndicate, as many in the ECA insisted, nor was it the Nausicaans, or even - as a few had suggested - renegade humans. If anything, this attack would harden the opposition to the Romulan assaults.
On his tactical display, Rick could see the four birds of prey begin maneuvering in a distinct formation, one he recognized from long hours of studying the battle footage from previous engagements. At both Elysium and Pacifica, the Romulans had used a space variation of the "finger four" formation; four ships, split into two distinct fighting wings with a single primary leader in both wings, would fly cover for one another. The first wing would fly slightly ahead and to one side of the second group. Simple, yet effective: four birds of prey utilizing that tactic had nearly crippled Challenger at Pacifica and had all but destroyed Enterprise at Elysium.
There hadn't been even a hint of such coordination here until now.
Rick silently observed their maneuvers with growing concern. Something simply wasn't adding up. An effective commander would have focused all of their firepower on Endeavour instead of wasting time with destroying the Boomer fleet. Upon arrival in-system, the Romulans had to see that there was only one real warship in the system, and military doctrine was clear no matter the species: take out the hard target first, and then focus on the soft targets. With Endeavour gone, eliminating the Boomers would have been little more difficult than an average gunnery exercise.
"Bring us around, Dan," the captain ordered, "attack pattern delta." Tucker seemed carved from ice as he continued. "Take us right down their throats. Mister Eisler." He shot Rick a look. "Remoras are a go."
Combining elements of the ancient MIRV nuclear missiles and the even more archaic limpet mine, the Remora was a torpedo designed by Tucker himself. Untested and untried in actual combat conditions, it was comprised of multiple warheads, each individually less powerful than the obsolete Mark III but each capable of independent targeting. All ten warheads in a Remora were equipped with specially designed magnetic attractors attuned to Romulan hull composition; the limited range of these attractors, however, required the Remora torpedo to be used at extremely close range.
The pitch of Endeavour's engines spiked as Hsiao banked and sent the starship into a spinning climb. Into the very heart of the Romulan formation the Starfleet ship raced, phase cannons spitting fire and carving searing scars across the hulls of two birds of prey. Three Remoras darted from Endeavour's torpedo tubes, breaking apart into multiple warheads almost at once, each seeking its own target. To the Romulans, it had to be confusing: a single torpedo abruptly became ten, and the space around the pitched lightfight was suddenly crisscrossed with thirty distinct targets instead of the three that had been launched. Point-defense weapons on the birds of prey stuttered out pulses of disruptor fire, destroying several of the Remoras, while the main batteries of the warships unleashed a devastating salvo upon Endeavour ina coordinated burst of firethat punched through the already weakened shields and into the hull plating. Alarms shrieked through the Starfleet ship as the sizzling energy burned through the hull and into the superstructure.
"Multiple hull breaches!" Mackenzie shouted from his DC console even as Eisler watched the warheads from the Remoras detonate. One of the Romulan ships was destroyed almost instantly; it disappeared in a violent burst of fire as the explosions of the small warheads ruptured its fuel cell. Two more of the birds of prey shuddered under the withering assault; secondary explosions ripped across their hulls, tearing apart armor with unexpected ferocity and sending both craft into uncontrolled tumbles. The fourth Romulan ship - the one that had deployed the breaching pods against the station - suffered the least damage as only two of the Remora warheads struck it.
"Status!" Tucker demanded from his command chair. It took Rick a moment, but he suddenly realized that the ambient hum of Endeavour's engines had ceased. Keying in a rapid sequence of commands, he ordered a second salvo of the Remoras - it would expend the last of the experimental torpedoes, but if the engine was offline they were running out of options. Already, damage reports were crawling across his screen and Eisler winced at the devastation; fully three-quarters of the phase cannons were inoperative and only two of the torpedo tubes still functioned.
"We've lost impulse!" the COB snapped, his features bleak. The distant hum of twin torpedoes being launched echoed through the bridge; recognizing its danger, the fourth Romulan ship dove for cover behind its wounded brethren.
"How long?" the captain asked as Rick stared at his sensor feed in surprise. All twenty of the Remora warheads homed in onto the hull of one of the damaged birds of prey and exploded with lethal consequences; consumed in fire, the ship began breaking apart almost instantly.
"Unknown," Mackenzie replied, once more in control of himself. Recognizing that the Starfleet ship was still dangerous, the fourth bird of prey pulled back, maneuvering to remain out of Endeavour's weapons range. Its half-crippled companion limped away as well, streams of warp plasma and debris trailing behind it.
"Minimal weapon systems, sir," Rick reported without being asked, "WSO is on it." With a nod, Tucker exchanged a look with T'Pol that seemed to convey some sort of meaning. She raised an eyebrow in a distinctly Vulcan manner before speaking as if he had asked a question.
"Both birds of prey are circling Endeavour," the commander stated calmly.
"What are they waiting for?" Lieutenant Devereux wondered aloud, unable to hide the fear in her voice.
"We are being scanned," T'Pol suddenly announced before anyone could offer a hypothesis to answer the lieutenant's question. Her fingers darting across the SCI board, the commander seemed poised to frown.
"Can you block it?" Tucker asked and she gave him a look that was almost contemptuous; despite the situation, Eisler nearly smiled.
"I am doing so now, Captain," came her cool response. A thought suddenly occurred to Rick, and he glanced down at his board to look over the damage once more.
"Sir," he said softly, his voice carrying despite the alarms, "it is possible that they mean to seize Endeavour." Eisler looked up, meeting Tucker's eyes. "We did just take on seven of them and survive. I'm sure they'd like to know how." The captain nodded, his expression darkening.
"Endeavour can not be taken, Commander," he declared and Rick nodded his understanding of what remained unspoken: the captain would scuttle Endeavour before allowing the ship to be captured. Tucker activated the intraship comm on his command chair with a sharp jab of his thumb. "All hands," he said calmly into it, "this is the captain. Stand by to repel boarders." He gave Rick another look. "Arm the bridge crew," he ordered, before glancing back toward T'Pol, "and keep an eye out for more breachin' pods."