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X

Odyssey out of time.

War Continues.

The Enterprise rocked as the Klingon disruptors struck the shields of the Sovereign-class starship. The small group of Klingon vessels was a mix of different types of Bird of Prey, Raptor, and larger attack cruiser as they pushed their impulse engines to the limit as they struggled to keep up with the Federation starship. The Klingons, like the Federation, had mastered the art of building spacecraft a long time ago, but while the Klingon ships were built with speed and power in mind, their shipbuilders had ensured their warships were built to fight using bursts of speed for short periods.

Using their smaller size and greater agility, the Birds of Prey swung over the Enterprise like their Terran namesakes, pounding the ship's shields with their disruptors, while one of them added photon torpedoes to the mix. The relentless pounding to the Federation starship weakened the shields. The Klingons had been noticing that the Federation had been adapting, modifying their weapons and their shields to withstand greater tests of combat. But to the Klingons, it added to the thrill of battle, while many saw it as a golden opportunity to win against the Federation. The Enterprise was yet another example of a starship that had been modified heavily in the last few months.

Despite being less agile than their sister ships, the Vor'cha class attack cruisers were powerful enough to inflict some serious damage to the Enterprise as well. Armed with more powerful disruptor cannons, the Klingon captains in charge of the ships targeted the areas of the Federation starship and simply did their best to increase the damage.

Immediately, Enterprise retaliated with a spread of torpedoes of quantum and photon torpedoes, the latest designs. One of the torpedoes missed a Bird of Prey, but another smashed into another's disruptor wing, exploding and ripping the weapon off and sending the Bird of Prey spinning out of control before it smashed into another of its sister ships, destroying both. Angered by this random bout of luck, the Klingons increased their firepower while the Enterprise retaliated with another torpedo spread and a volley of phaser fire.

The second volley smashed into one of the attack cruisers, and the kinetic force of the impacts was so powerful enough that it rang the ship like a bell, knocking some of the startled Klingons off of their feet. The Enterprise fired another volley when they realised the first had actually weakened some of the neck and engineering sections and the port nacelle wing, and the volley was three times harder than the last one. The first seven torpedoes fired at the neck alone exploded simultaneously before the phaser beam struck through, piercing the shields like an old fashioned armour piercing round slicing through the armour of a primitive knight. Under such heavy fire, the usually durable metals and composites used by the Klingons for their shipbuilding and their hull supports beneath were torn apart by the antimatter detonations, exposing several sections of the neck to space. The forceful explosive decompression sent dead or dying warriors into the vacuum of cold hard space, but the impact was only a sign of things to come when another volley which included a high-yield torpedo and a number of conventional torpedoes and augmented by another phaser beam ripped through the port nacelle wing, heavily crippling the Klingon cruiser.

The force of the explosion acted like a baseball bat smacking a ball in a different direction, the Vor'cha cruiser was thrown into a spinning circle before the crew were able to stabilise the damage, but the other ships continued moving in for the kill.

X

Inside the Enterprise, alarms were starting to blare like crazy like the wails of a wounded animal. Captain Picard, desperate to keep himself in his command chair, wrapped his legs around the stem of the chair and grasped the sides tightly to keep himself in place. Not for the first time, Picard wondered why it was impossible for Starfleet ships to get seatbelts or some kind of strap to prevent crew members sitting at their posts, or command level officers like himself and Will from being thrown around the bridge. Inertial dampeners were fine, but they were useless in this kind of situation.

No matter how many times he promised himself whenever he or his ship got into these kinds of scraps, Picard would always forget the urge to research that kind of safeguard. His primary responsibilities were the safety of his crew and the continual running of his ship, and Picard had learnt the lessons of command the hard way.

"Damage report?" He bellowed.

"Shields are down to 60%; dorsal shields are taking a battering!" Daniels, his new security and tactical officer, reported.

"I thought the alien shields from the ship that came through the wormhole were supposed to be more resilient than the ones we normally use?" Deanna called from next to Picard.

"They are, Counsellor, but like all shield technologies, the Asgard level shields can be exhausted by powerful weapons," Data explained briefly.

Picard grimaced as he thought about the technical update Geordi had been sent only a few months ago. That was it, a simple transmission containing a host of instructions to be inputted into the Enterprise's computer, modifying the shields and designs for a plasma beam weapon that was many times more powerful than the weapons they used already.

That was it, a transmission.

Picard couldn't help but think the transmission was a sign the Federation, and Starfleet, were still trying to shake off the annoying complacency which had settled in over the years, a complacency he himself had been forced to recognise. A long time ago, Q had thrown the Enterprise D into the path of a Borg Cube. The encounter severely damaged the Galaxy-class starship, and eighteen people were killed when the Cube cut a piece of the hole, like someone sticking a knife into a cake to see if it was cooked or not, but as time had passed Picard had long since been grateful towards Q for the experience, although at the time he had been like the rest of the crew shaken and horrified by what the powerful entity had down.

But Picard knew Q had actually done them a favour, and thanks to the encounter at System-J25, the Federation were better prepared for the Borg attack, although his own assimilation had taken everyone by surprise. But now they had more powerful defences and with the Odyssey, they had the potential to go much further.

Even with the threat of the Dominion on the other side of the wormhole and the conflicts that had been growing since the Jem'Hadar were first encountered two years ago, Starfleet was being slow in preparing, but the war with the Klingons had changed all of that. Anyone who had hoped the unveiling of the Martok changeling would stop Gowron from this pointless war was naive. Too many Klingons had it in their heads they could win in a battle with the Federation, and they were going out of their way to prove it.

Picard and his crew had become veterans of the fighting to the point where every single member of his crew was armed with hand phasers. The Klingons had managed to break down Enterprise's shields often enough for Picard to see anyone who wasn't armed were going to die with a dk'tahg blade in their chest, and Picard had long since given up on trying to use diplomacy on the Klingons.

But right now his mind was on the current mission. The Enterprise had been sent on a deep-space patrol to show the flag, and to remind the galaxy the Federation was still in business - Starfleet command had hoped the flagship's presence would ensure everyone realised how seriously the Federation took peace in an increasingly insane Quadrant, but the Klingon attack was not unexpected.

"How many Klingon ships are there now?" Picard demanded.

"14, sir."

"Why so many?" Deanna asked.

"Because Enterprise is the Federation's flagship, and one of the more advanced ships of the Starfleet; if the Enterprise is captured or destroyed, it would cripple Federation morale. But it is not going to happen. Tactical," Picard ordered.

Daniels inputted the command to show Picard the position of the Klingon ships on the main viewscreen, and when he saw them Picard was still amazed by how many Klingon ships there were, but that didn't mean there couldn't have been many more lying in wait, waiting for the opportunity to launch an attack on a weakening enemy. The Klingons were like wolves, or Komodo dragons, or African hyenas, biting down hard on an enemy vessel with torpedoes and disruptors

Picard frowned as he studied the viewscreen. The Klingons had them outnumbered and they were hammering the Enterprise as they tried to evade and carry out their mission. It had been like this for months. And he had had enough.

"Turn us around," Picard's voice was cold, hard and sharpened with anger.

"Sir?" Will questioned.

"The Klingons want a fight with us, let's give them one. Hard about. Mr Daniels as we swing around, fire a spread of quantum torpedoes and set some of them to explode to fool their sensors," Picard ordered.

"Aye, sir."

X

As the Enterprise swung around, the aft torpedo launchers fired a volley of torpedoes towards the Klingon ships. In keeping with the threat of the Borg and the Dominion lurking on the other side of the galaxy, the Sovereign-class starship was more heavily armed than the Galaxy-class and featured more torpedo launchers and phaser emitters. Taken by surprise by the volley from so many torpedo launchers, the Klingon warships were either caught by the torpedoes or the high-yield variants which detonated severely damaged three more Birds of Prey.

With mechanical indifference, the advanced guidance systems of each torpedo that was set to lock onto the Klingon ships did so with frightening accuracy before they detonated, the Asgard modifications to the torpedoes so they functioned more like a mix between the Ion and plasma weapons used by the Asgard in that they could puncture inferior types of shielding like a plasma torch through butter and the drone weapons of the Ancients so they ignored the rest of the Klingon shielding and got to the hull to cause the most damage.

Starfleet had been modifying their weapons according to the drone design - while much of the technology was not used by the Asgard, the powerful and benevolent aliens had known enough of the technology to understand how the drones worked, and they had added the details of the technology to their database.

Starfleet engineers had merely scratched the surface, but some of the more innovative thinkers had decided to add transporters to their weapon systems and beam some of the torpedoes towards their enemies so they wouldn't have so much of a journey and give their opponent time to react. Several of the torpedo volley fired by the Enterprise exploded really close to some of the more critical areas of the Klingon's hulls.

The luckier Klingon ships had to either dive or veer off to avoid the wreckage of their sister's vessels. But then they came face to face with the Enterprise.

Relying on the forward weapons array, the Enterprise attacked the Klingon ships head-on, using their Asgard modifications to the phasers to badly damage several of the warships before firing a spread of quantum torpedoes towards the remaining Birds of Prey. Using the transporter tactic of beaming the torpedoes so close to the hulls of the enemy warships, the Enterprise crippled one of the attack cruisers. The torpedoes detonated dangerously close to the warp nacelles in an explosion that brought down the shields in that part of the ship. The explosion ruptured the Bussard collectors of the attack cruiser's nacelle, which worked in the same way as they did on many Federation starships in the gathering of hydrogen particles for a constant supply of matter fuel for their matter-antimatter reaction, setting up a chain reaction that destroyed the nacelle in a chain reaction which overloaded the plasma stream to the nacelles, blowing it up.

The explosion sent the attack cruiser spinning like the one before that, but the Enterprise bore down hard on the cruiser, targeting the engineering section, the neck and the second wing. The shields, already battered by the earlier impacts, had been weakened so badly to the point of collapse by the destruction of the warp nacelle, and the next impacts only weakened them more until the latest phaser blasts pierced through the armoured hull of the Klingon warship; the augmented phasers sliced through the Klingon engineering section exposing many areas to the vacuum of space, driving through the sections to the warp core. The core's magnetic fields were collapsed, triggering a warp core breach.

When the cruiser was destroyed, the Enterprise threw herself at the remaining Birds of Prey, destroying three of them. The remaining warships went into warp.

X

Daniels looked up from his console. "The Klingon ships are withdrawing, Captain."

But Picard wasn't so sure. Months of combat had worn him down and he had enough of lurching from one skirmish to skirmish and battle to battle to the next, and he was having to think more of a soldier than as an explorer. It was depressing. And he had had more than enough. "There could still be Klingon warships nearby. Maintain Red Alert, Mr Daniels. I want all weapon systems and shields to be on standby. Number One, coordinate with Mr La Forge to make repairs. Mr Hawk, resume our original course. Engage, warp 5."

"Aye, sir," Hawk replied as he made adjustments to the helm console and the Enterprise swung around and quickly entered the warp vortex as they resumed their original heading.

The turbolift doors opened and a small number of crewmen came in, some of them were members of Geordi's damage repair team and the others were from the medical staff. Slowly the two teams worked on the damaged areas of the bridge, opening up maintenance panels and replacing damaged circuits to get closer to the damage while the medical team checked the injured members of the bridge crew. Picard's heart seized as he took notice of them.

He had joined Starfleet in the hopes of becoming an adventurer, an explorer of numerous worlds, wanting to see new phenomena never seen even during the days of Kirk's time, but he had never imagined dealing with war or combat scenarios until he was older. Picard desperately hoped things improved, but he had the horrible feeling things were going to get much worse.

X

The longer Admiral Paris read the recent reports from Starfleet Command, the more he wished he could shake the entire Klingon Empire by the throat. A part of him actually hoped the Dominion when they finally arrived gave the Empire a taste of reality. They needed it. All of this talk about how the Quadrant should be under Klingon control to make it safer from the threat of the Founders was a joke. Ever since the war began and relations with the Klingons plummeted to an all-time low, hardly seen in the Federation since the 23rd century.

True, some of the Klingons likely believed in the rubbish spouted by their leaders, the majority of them simply wanted more glory, to expand their Empire more. Gowron and his race were heading for a fall. And truthfully Admiral Paris genuinely found it hard to truly care about what would happen to them.

It didn't help some good friends had been killed by the Klingons.

When the door chime sounded Paris was relieved to tear his eyes away from the padd. The contents of the report were too depressing for him to care right now.

"Come!" He called.

Automatically as if the doors of his office opened under the will of God, the nervous figure of Lieutenant Reginald Barclay walked in. Paris frowned. Barclay had been recommended to join the projects going on here due to his ingenuity, and he had very quickly become a favourite of Paris mostly because he had a way of thinking most Starfleet officers did not or could not ever appreciate. In the past, it would have been extremely unlikely if Paris would have liked the younger man, but he had mellowed.

"Yes, Mr Barclay, what is it?"

Barclay took a deep breath. "Ad-Admiral, do you remember the report on h-how the ZPM was giving out in the Delta Quadrant?" He began without preamble. Paris stiffened in his chair. Usually, Barclay spent a few minutes talking before he reached the point in the conversation he wanted to reach. For him to not do that was a red flag.

"What about it?"

"W-well, it seems, Admiral, there was enough power in the ZPM for them to stay for a little longer, without worrying about a power drain."

Paris stared at Barclay in surprise. "Are you telling me Sisko and his crew didn't have to leave the Delta Quadrant at all?"

"Chief O'Brien had studied the ZPM when he first found it, sir," Barclay was unwilling for Paris to lash out at the DS9 crew, especially his former Enterprise shipmate. "But his primary interest was the other systems. He likely learnt the ZPM, when exhausted would be useless but he didn't realise the device had a more durable power capacity. It's not his fault, Admiral. In fact, it helped us to understand more about how they work and more. From what we can tell, the Ancients who made the ZPMs weren't entirely thrilled about the technology, either because when they're finished, that's it. But they've given us ideas for the future of our power technology, we would never have gotten there without Chief O'Brien's findings."

Paris needed to take a deep breath so he could properly look at this perspective. The last thing he needed was to explode with anger, although truthfully he wasn't that angry since it was not uncommon for mistakes with understanding alien technology to be made. Barclay was right. The ZPM had given dozens of scientists working for the project many ideas about the best way to take their experiments and their research, but hopefully, in time they would get Voyager home.

Instead, he took a deep breath. "How is it going with the hyperdrive experiments?"

On surer ground now, Barclay smiled. "The first prototypes are being finished, sir."

"That was quick."

"We're studying the theory from the Asgard computer, sir. In any case, some of the science's basics are known to us already. We've found sorting through it hasn't been difficult. The only problem we have is the power systems for it. Antimatter is not as powerful, so we're looking for more exotic means."

"Keep me posted."

X

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