STAR TREK:
THE NO-WIN SCENARIO
By Darrin Colbourne
"VAMPIRE!" The Sensor Officer called out. "They just launched another salvo!"
"Maintain course and speed!" Pike called out. The particle cannons and drones would take care of the missiles and he needed to keep Enterprise's most powerful weapon - the torpedo launcher - pointed toward the enemy. "Fire Control, do you have solutions yet?"
"Aye, Sir!" Fire Control called out. "Solutions set for Kings One and Three!"
"Fire one and two! Reload with Mk 24s until I say otherwise!"
"Torpedoes away!" Weapons called out. "Torpedoes running hot, straight…" The two torpedoes winked out of existence before he could finish. "…and normal!"
Aboard the Gowron, the Sensor Officer blanched. He was about to report that he'd lost track of the torpedoes Enterprise had just launched when several alarms sounded as two major shockwaves rattled the ship on both flanks. The officer checked his screens. "Captain! Gorkon and Tyr have been destroyed!"
Kor glared at him. "How?!"
"I don't know! Enterprise had launched two torpedoes, but I lost track of them soon after they were spaced. It was as if…"
Kor cut him off with a slashing motion. "Just tell me if it happens again! Helm, emergency jump to Warp on my mark! Communicator, signal Kragg and have them prepare to do the same! Hurry, damn you!" He was mulling over the firing rate of a Constitution-class's torpedo tubes.
All too soon the Sensor Officer called out, "Enterprise is shooting again! I've lost the torpedoes!"
"Helm! Jump now! Now!"
The Gowron winked out of existence just a microsecond before the Mk 24 targeting her winked back in where the Klingon ship's center of mass would have been. With its target gone, the torpedo went into a sub-light search pattern and began scanning the surrounding area for it, or something similar. Kragg wasn't so fortunate. That ship tried to enter subspace at the exact same moment the torpedo was coming out. The two objects met in the threshold and disappeared from existence entirely. A moment later, the searching Mk 24 gave up on its primary target and looked for one of opportunity, which it found in one of the Birds of Prey. It winked out of existence again, taking out the BoP upon its return."Bird Three sunk!" Enterprise's Sensor Officer called out, confirming the BoP's demise. "King Two presumed sunk!"
"Three Kahlesses and a Bird of Prey," Number One remarked as she guided the ship through a mass of attacking missiles. "Not bad at all!"
"But not perfect," Pike said. "King Four got away." They now knew two things. The warp-capable Mk 24 Anti-shipping torpedoes worked as advertised, and there was at least one tactic that could be deployed against them if the target had sufficient warning. "Reload with Mk 10s! We'll use those on the other Birds!" That way, they could save their limited supply of 24s for the task of overwhelming King Four when it returned, which Pike was sure it would do. "Communicator, recall Riders One and Two to help out!"
The Gowron reentered normal space ten astronomical units away from the battle. Kor pounded the armrest of his chair and seethed, "Dammit! So Far? Helm, get us turned back to the battle, Ahead Flank!"
"Not at Warp?" His First Officer asked.
"Not yet," Kor muttered. He needed time to think. "Communicator, add this update to the intelligence packet: 'The Humans have begun deploying their new warp-capable anti-ship weapons. They can be evaded by going to Warp, but only with sufficient warning.'" He checked the repeaters on his control panel. "'The cue will be the detection of a small Warp threshold opening up just after a torpedo launch, followed by the loss of contact with the weapons.' Send that now!" He settled back as the communicator acknowledged. "Hopefully that will get our weapons designers off their collective asses and back to work!" He fumed to no one in particular. "Now, Sensors, full magnification on the screen! I want to see what's going on!"
The officer complied and Kor was treated to a visual of his five remaining Birds of Prey closing in on the United Earth starship. They had unleashed yet another salvo of anti-ship missiles, which Enterprise was swatting out of the universe handily.
It made Kor growl in rage. "Communicator, All ships: Stop wasting good missiles on salvo attacks! Close on Enterprise and use energy weapons, and stay so close that she won't dare use torpedoes against you! Stick on her like lyichen on a targh!" Kor brooded until he saw the fleet was complying, then he smiled. "Good, Good!" Then his smile widened when two more ships winked into the image.
"The Cavaliers!" The First Officer said. "They've returned!"
"Finally!" Kor said. The whole purpose of his mission here was about to be fulfilled. In one of those small spacecraft was the Human pilot known as Brigid Silas. He had been hoping to force Enterprise to launch at least one of them, on the off chance that Silas would be the one to go. With both ships in the sky, it was almost guaranteed. Now that they were about to join the fray, he could be assured of her destruction. He wondered fleetingly if the Human "scientist" Isabel Montoya was with Silas in the cockpit again, but ultimately it didn't matter. Destroy the Cavaliers and they'd get at least one target. Destroy the Enterprise, and both women would soon be sharing a cockpit in whatever the Humans called Hell.
You will be avenged, Brother Toro, Kor thought, then he ordered, "Cloak the ship! Helm, prepare to jump back to the battle area on my mark!""Holy Crap!" Silas said when she saw the pounding Enterprise was taking. "Those Birds are all over our air base!"
"Enterprise will hold up!" Shanahan said. "They gave up on the missiles and are trying to take her out with particle guns! What her external armor can't stop, her internal armor will seal itself against!"
"Not forever, and right now Prize is having just as much trouble using her guns against the bad guys! Gimme a torpedo and prepare to go active! We're going in!"
"You wanna use a torpedo so close to Prize?"
"Hopefully our target will run when it realizes we have a lock and that won't be a problem. Worse comes to worst, we singe some paint and put a few dings in Prize's hull. Either way, it takes some of the heat…"
She was interrupted by a high-pitched warning tone. "We got inbounds!" Shanahan called out. "Come right and down and floor it!"
Silas complied, rolling the ship right and adding a few degrees down-angle before fire-walling the sub-light engines. "What do we got?"
"Scanner-guided anti-air, nine missiles…they had to have come off Raptors!"
"What Raptors?!"
Shanahan hesitated. "The nine Raptors that are trying to overrun and outflank us! Launching countermeasures! Jink left! Jink left!"
Silas cursed as she maneuvered the ship.
"The Raptor force is breaking up!" The Sensor Officer announced over the rattling the ship was doing. "Nine Bandits each are now pursuing Rider One and Two!"
"Well, now we know what the Raptors were waiting for!" Number One called out.
"Air Defense sweep!" Pike called back. "Somehow the knowledge doesn't comfort me!" For a moment there it looked like Rider One would try to torpedo one of the Birds of Prey. Pike half-hoped that Silas would take the risk. Anything would have been better than the situation he was currently in. Every now and again Enterprise managed to damage a BoP enough to drive it off, but there were so many attacking so closely that he couldn't concentrate enough fire to destroy any of them outright.
Just then Commander John Adams delivered more bad news from the Engineering Watch Station. "Captain! These guys are starting to break through! We've got multiple outer hull breaches in both sections! They haven't gotten through to any critical areas and Damage Control is on top of the worst ones, but we can't stay lucky forever!"
"We won't have to!" Pike said. "Number One, emergency jump on my mark!" He had come to a decision. The risk inherent in Enterprise going to Warp under these conditions was greater for the Klingons than it was for the starship.
Number One switched her hand to the Warp throttle as she keyed her Intercraft button. "All Decks, Prepare for Space Warp!"
Pike counted to three in his head before calling out, "Engage!"
The results were immediate and dramatic. The shockwave caused by Enterprise's jump threw three of the Birds of Prey several kilometers in different directions. The remaining Birds, the closest, were swept up in the starship's wake. They re-entered normal space trailing Enterprise, disoriented and out of control.
It was just what Pike was waiting for. "Cannons to anti-ship mode! Fire at will!"
In seconds, the robot arms the particle cannons were mounted on re-deployed so that all the weapons were aimed aft and targeted on the closest BoP. That ship was decimated by a hail of high-energy particles a second later, and was soon followed by its companion.
Pike wanted to cheer, but he knew there was more work to do. He checked the main viewer. "Okay, where the hell are we?"
The Navigator checked their position. "Other side of the nebula from the battle area, about nine A.U. distant."
"Get us back there," Pike said. "Cannons to anti-air mode!" It was time to help out the Cavaliers.
"We might want to think about following Prize's example!" Shanahan called out as Rider One continued to run from its pursuers.
"Already thought about it," Silas said. "Raptors are too maneuverable and their pilots are too smart for that to work on them!"
"I'm not talking about anything fancy!" Shanahan said. "I just think we need to put on some speed, and we're balls-to-the-wall now, which means either we warp or we dump the torpedoes!"
"We are not wasting two perfectly good torpedoes just to get a few more meters-per-second of delta vee!"
"I knew you'd say that, which is why I said…"
"All right! I get it! How are the Bandits set up on us right now?"
Shanahan checked his screen. "Two V-formations, one of four and one of five, closing on us on our Eight- and Five O'clock respectively!"
"Any trailing them?"
"Not that I can see!"
"That'll have to do! Standby for Space Warp!" Silas checked her head-up display and let the enemy ships get a little closer, then she reversed the Cavalier's Warp engines and throttled them. A split-second later Rider One was a light-minute behind the Klingon formations and watching as they sped off on their base course. She took a moment to flip their exhausts the bird before maneuvering and giving her next order. "Snapshot! Give me a wide-field, long-range scan and target the nearest Bird of Prey!"
Shanahan took half-a-minute to comply. "Got him! You've got torpedoes!"
Silas pulled the trigger twice. "Rider One, Torpedoes Away!" The two torpedoes on the Cavalier's flanks detached and sped off at full sub-light speed toward the targeted Klingon ship.
Silas turned her head to Shanahan. "There! I went to Warp and dumped the torpedoes! Happy now?"
Before Shanahan could answer, a series of shockwaves rattled the Cavalier as the pursuing Raptor force warped in all around their position.
"Could be happier…" Shanahan muttered as the Klingons maneuvered to close in from every direction.
There was a split-second of terror where Silas contemplated going to Warp again, then another, bigger shockwave rattled Cavalier and Raptor alike as the United Space Ship Enterprise returned to normal space nearby and began targeting Raptors with her particle cannons, turning what would have been a ridiculously hairy dogfight into a turkey shoot.
"You're beautiful, Prize!" Silas radioed to the ship.
The response was all business. "Rider One, Prize. Rider Two is totally defensive. Position is being relayed by datalink. Transit at Warp and lend assistance."
"Roger that, Prize," Silas radioed as she checked her head-up display. "We're on our way." She turned the ship and said to Shanahan, "Standby for Space Warp."
"Why doesn't Prize just do for Two what it did for us?" Shanahan asked.
"She'll be busy. There's still three Birds of Prey out there." Rider One warped away a moment later.
"Bird One has gone evasive," Sensors called out. "He's got two Mk 18s on his ass!"
"Let's give him something more to think about," Pike said. "Snapshot on Bird One! Fire when ready!"
"Solution, set!" Fire Control said.
"Torpedo away!" Weapons said.
"Where are the other Birds?" Pike asked.
"Got 'em!" Sensors said. "Bird Five is at One-O-Clock high and Bird Six is at Ten-O-Clock low, both are inbound and running flat-out to get here!" An alarm sounded. "They just lit off their targeting scanners!"
"Snapshots on both ships!" Pike called out.
"Solutions set!" Fire Control called out.
"Torpedoes away!" Weapons called out.
"Reload with 24s!" Pike called. He watched as the salvo of Mk 10s he just launched closed on their targets. Though Bird One was frantically trying to dodge its pursuers, Five and Six continued on course and speed until they launched a pair of anti-ship missiles each. "Cannons to counterfire mode!" Pike ordered. He maintained course and speed as well, waiting until all three Klingon ships were maneuvering for survival. When he saw this, he ordered, "Set solutions for Five and Six! Fire when ready! Reload with 24s!"
Solutions were set, the torpedoes were launched, and two short jumps later Birds of Prey Five and Six were obliterated because they were too busy evading conventional torpedoes to go to Warp. A minute later, Bird One lost its race with its pursuers. It died in a ball of nuclear fire.
"All Birds of Prey sunk!" Sensors called out.
"How are the Cavaliers doing?" Pike said.
"Rider One managed to reduce the odds some," Sensors said. "There are five Bandits left. Riders One and Two have gone evasive."
"Both ships are down to their guns for anti-air," The Communicator added.
Pike checked the positions of all the ships on the sensor repeater and said, "Helm, right ten and up fifteen, increase to Full! Communicator, have Riders One and Two rendezvous with us and buzz the saucer! Cannons to anti-air mode!"
All the officers acknowledged and complied, and soon Enterprise was on a collision course with her tactical craft, which were in turn being pursued by the remaining Raptors. The distance between the starship and the formation closed rapidly, and before anyone knew it the Cavaliers were passing down the starship's left side. Three of the Raptors were destroyed by cannon fire as they tried to pull off the same maneuver. The last two evaded Enterprise's guns just long enough to find themselves in the sights of the no-longer-retreating Cavaliers, then died in a barrage of laser fire.
Pike let himself feel a little relieved for the first time since the battle started, but he knew it wasn't over. "Recall Riders One and Two! I want them reloaded and re-launched ASAP! We still have…"
Sensors interrupted him. "New Contact! Warp energy transient off our port quarter!" Another alarm sounded. "VAMPIRE! Particle barrage inbound!" A second later the ship shook and the lights dimmed as a storm of particle blasts slammed into Enterprise's port engine nacelle, tearing through the machinery and sending shrapnel into the starboard nacelle.
"Go, Number One, Go!" Pike yelled. Number One fire-walled the sub-light throttles in an effort to get the ship away from whatever was shooting at them.
As the Enterprise streaked off, the Gowron decloaked and crossed her wake, then turned to pursue. "This ends here, Humans," Kor growled at the viewscreen.