Discontinuity: Indefatigable
by chaos_eternus
Four
Osiris was not happy.
The parasites that called themselves 'civilisations' in this universe had taken back the world she had conquered. Worse, they had destroyed the Ha'tak she had left behind as a picket in the process.
They had reacted swiftly, too swiftly and in numbers great enough to be a real threat. If they attacked her main force directly, they would pay dearly in blood for the pain but they may just win and that was unacceptable.
What was equally unacceptable was that they may well be able to see her fleet. The Hermes may have been an older, less capable vessel, one overdue for replacement, but if she looked in the right direction, she would have been able to pick up her fleet from the next star system over.
The more modern, powerful vessels the primitives had gathered?
This required some thought.
No, it required some time, but time even these primates would know better then to give her. She would need to move away from this area of space, find some little travelled world to conquer and use as a springboard to take the galaxy, but where?
She grimaced, the enemy would know.
Perhaps she had best make them tell her.
It would require suitable bait of course…
Captain Picard grimaced, his eyes not betraying the glare he wished to send at all the pads scattered in overgrowing piles across his desk. Being captain of a ship provided him with paperwork enough, being Commodore of a battle group just added to it. But to be Commodore of a multinational taskforce… The dominion war may have been over for several years now, but there were still Commodores being chased up for war era paperwork that they quite literally hadn't had a chance to complete.
Picard groaned, aloud this time, gaining a sympathetic smile from the petite Ensign who had just dumped another five pads on his desk. But no, he didn't just have the paperwork from a multinational taskforce to deal with, or at least those parts of it he couldn't delegate to somebody else, he also had to explain in terms so simple that even a bureaucrat could understand it, why their intervention at CT895-XC wasn't a prime directive violation, the inhabitants of the world not naturally having any interplanetary spaceflight capabilities, let alone intrasystem until Osiris had arrived. Indeed, their scientists only understood small parts of the technology that now littered their world and even that little meant that the damage was done.
Not, Picard privately admitted to himself, that certain Admirals would ever see it that away. But then, certain Admirals had their heads stuck so far up their asses they could see their own necks, from the inside.
Damn it, he needed to get away from this paperwork. It was putting him straight into one of his rare overly cynical moods.
"Come in" he shouted, a little exasperated as the door chimed.
"Good morning Cap…" Ewing's eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline, "please don't tell me you really have to fill this lot out?"
"Unfortunately yes, drink?"
"Tea please, strong and black" Ewing grimaced, reaching over to grab a PAD to glance at its contents. Smirking, he dropped the PAD onto the floor, "we have this organisation technique in the RSS, it's called the piles technique"
It was Picard's turn to raise his eyebrows, "the piles technique?"
"Yep," Ewing cheerfully reached into the mass of PADs and began sorting "you create five piles labelled Do Yesterday, Do Today, Dump on somebody else, Consider doing if you really have nothing else to do…" Ewing grimaced, looking to the entire world as if he had just steeped in something odious as he dropped the first PAD into pile five, "and consider doing when hell freezes over, maybe"
Picard hid a slight grin; he really should do all this but…
"Or as my Exec would call it, Reports needed yesterday, urgent reports; somebody else's problem, necessary but not urgent and bureaucratic bullshit"
"Nice as it is to see some if this vanishing, I don't think you cane here to help me with mount paperwork"
Chuckling slightly, Ewing nodded, "No, I didn't. My engineering chief wants permission to talk to yours about getting replacements for spares and ammo used fabricated"
"Granted" Picard didn't even need to think about that, "I'll tell LaForge to expect him"
"Thanks, and if you ever feel the needed for a brewed cup, not this" Ewing waved the offending mug of Tea about, "replicated junk, feel free to pop over"
"I will, thank you captain" Picard nodded, smiling amused at Captain Ewing's back as the Tau'ri officer walked jauntily out of the room.
It seemed even across different universes, some things were constant. Back in his Challenger days, they had called it Red Alert, yellow alert, XO's problem, green alert or normal running and fire out a torpedo tube method of paperwork organisation. Picard smothered a chuckle as he picked up a PAD from the 'Do yesterday' pile. Yes. It was nice to know that some things never changed.
Picard grinned as the reports slowly filtered back in. It seemed they had one major advantage at least, despite the ability of Anubis's ships to detect cloaks; they couldn't detect any of this universes ship's if they were cloaked. Defiant had hovered undiscovered over Osiris's ships whilst they hovered over the Intergate for hours, and now, the attacking vessels at CT-895-XC had not been detected unless they weren't cloaked and now a Romulan Warbird had passed right through Osiris's fleet at CT-897-XX without being detected.
Another advantage to the home team, and they need all they could.
Especially with Osiris's command ship to contend with.
Damn, but he had hoped the Tau'ri had exaggerated the capabilities, hell, the sheer size of the Ral'tec class Motherships. Picard was worried, their fleet would suffer massive casualties taking that thing out, assuming they could separate her from the four Ha'taks Osiris seemed to have left. If those Ha'taks decided to join in the fun, he had no doubt that it would become a massacre, a rout of the Allied fleet.
Picard grimaced, they really needed to catch each of the Ha'taks on their lonesome and destroy them one by one, then move onto the mothership, especially with their major advantage, the Indefatigable now running at reduced capacity, the protection of her 'universal bubble' entirely gone.
Unfortunately, if Osiris decided to go on a rampage they would really be in trouble. She could destroy station after station; city after city if she decided to do that and the joint fleet would not be able to tell which planet she was moving on next. That was another thing Starfleet was very interested in, the Goa'uld drives still worked in this universe, indeed, Indefatigable had reported that power usage by the drives was down after a few modifications to account for the different rules of this universe.
And they couldn't be detected that easily by the Federation sensors…
Picard sighed, and then grimaced as the Red Alert sounded.
Striding swiftly across to the door, he stepped into the Bridge, a 'Report!' sounding from his lips.
"Captain, we've picked up what appears to be a Ha'tak class vessel approximately three hours away. She's transmitting a badly encrypted request for reinforcements to assist with an onboard mutiny."
"Interesting," he mused, then shook his head, "remind the picket their not expected to engage Goa'uld warships unless they truly believe they have the advantage and take us out, maximum warp."