He shook his head in disbelief.
As Endeavour shook under a sudden salvo of fire from the bird of prey, Lieutenant Commander Rick Eisler found himself more than a little surprised at the sheer audacity of the Romulan commander. The Starfleet ship clearly outgunned the smaller Romulan warship, and committing to an attack run as the Romulan was doing made little tactical sense. If the enemy commander had not already displayed cunning, Rick would not have been worried.
"Hard to starboard!" the captain demanded as the Romulan ship continued to fire. Sizzling disruptor beams splashed against Endeavour's protective force screen, momentarily bathing the larger ship with a viridian hue that outlined the extent of its shield. Three torpedoes curled through the hard vacuum, shuddering in mid-flight as Endeavour's point-defense guns burned into them. Even as the Starfleet ship banked to the right, her own weapons were replying. Scarlet streams of phase cannon fire stabbed toward the bird of prey, splattering against the shields surrounding it.
To Rick's continuing surprise, the Romulan ship did not maneuver to maintain its position at Endeavour's aft, choosing to instead turn hard in the opposite direction. Eisler frowned at the unconventional tactic as he issued new instructions to Hayes' weapons teams; in response to these new orders, a quartet of Mark VI photonic torpedoes darted from the launch tubes, orienting themselves almost instantly toward the rapidly maneuvering bird of prey.
"Get us behind him!" Tucker ordered, and Lieutenant Mayweather's hands began dancing across her navigation board. Gravity pushed Rick back into his seat as the dampeners struggled with the sudden change in velocity. He frowned again as he studied the sensor feed at his station. Too late, he realized what the Romulan was doing.
Engines flaring brightly, the bird of prey rolled along its horizontal axis as it raced by one of the inflatable decoys, missing the ballute's surface by mere meters. The sudden merging of the Romulan and decoy sensor signatures confused the primitive tracking computers in the four pursuing torpedoes; three of them were completely fooled, and slammed into the decoy with a fierce explosion. The remaining warhead took two impossibly long seconds to discern between the conflicting signatures; it curved away from the exploding decoy to formulate this decision and, by the time that it decided to continue pursuing the bird of prey, its fuel supply had run out. Following its programming, it self-destructed harmlessly hundreds of kilometers away from either ship.
Displaying maneuverability that Endeavour could not match, the Romulan ship climbed into another attack run, this time approaching from an oblique angle that made targeting it with the primary weapons difficult. Endeavour shook once more as disruptor fire slammed into the shields. Rolling, the bird of prey abruptly dove away from the larger ship, engines flaring with what Rick assumed was the equivalent of afterburners.
"Mister Eisler," Captain Tucker said sharply, his tone tenser than it had been in a very long time. Rick shrugged slightly as he issued new instructions to the weapons teams loading the torpedo tubes.
"He's very good," the tactical officer replied as the Romulan ship continued its rapid evasive maneuvers. Endeavour's phase cannons were still spitting fire at the fast ship, but most of the shots went wide as the bird of prey jinked and rolled.
Under Mayweather's hand, Endeavour pursued the more agile ship doggedly, inexplicably reminding Eisler of a boxer relying on brute strength to defeat a much more nimble opponent. The commander of the Romulan ship seemed to recognize that he was outgunned, and continued to dance just out of optimal weapons range. Shots were exchanged, but with minimal effect.
"Got you!" Lieutenant Mayweather suddenly growled as the bird of prey began another wide turn. The lieutenant's hands flew across the helm console as she sent Endeavour into a steep, stomach-lurching climb. For a moment, Rick didn't comprehend what she had done, but the confusion dissolved as the Romulan ship banked directly into the NC-06's line of fire. Clearly, Mayweather had seen a pattern in the bird of prey's flight path and taken advantage of that.
Instantly, Endeavour's weapons systems unleashed a withering barrage of fire upon the smaller ship. Phase cannon fire punched through the bird of prey's weakening shields, carving jagged scars across the warship's hull. Four torpedoes roared from the launch tubes and screamed across the void; two were instantly destroyed by Romulan point-defense, and a third missed wide and detonated against a small asteroid chunk. The fourth warhead hit the bird of prey with hull-crushing force, but, incredibly, skipped off of the warship and tumbled end over end deeper into the asteroid field. Though the torpedo did not explode, the kinetic energy of its impact shattered hull plating.
Reeling under the brutal onslaught and trailing atmosphere, the bird of prey curved sharply away from the NC-06, momentarily exposing its aft quarter as it raced away. One of the engines was flickering sporadically, but before Endeavour's weapons could take advantage of this brief second of weakness, a mine-sized object was ejected from the Romulan ship and sent tumbling toward the Starfleet ship. Point-defense systems immediately began targeting the object.
And then, the object exploded.
Almost instantly, Rick's sensor feed went blank, and he heard a startled gasp come from another bridge officer. Glancing up quickly, he could see that the monitors on all systems had temporarily failed. Static flickered upon the main viewscreen, and all eyes turned toward the Vulcan first officer.
"Fascinating," she murmured, her fingers rapidly inputing commands to her station. "All external sensors have been affected," T'Pol announced. "Attempting to compensate."
As she worked, Eisler studied his own data with a frown. Prior to system failure, Endeavour's sensors had detected massive damage on the bird of prey. He issued rapid instructions to the weapons teams, ordering them to concentrate all subsequent fire on the damaged areas. Once the targeting sensors were back online, he would have a better idea of how extensive the damage was to the Romulan ship.
"T'Pol..." The captain's voice betrayed his worry, and the Vulcan commander gave him a quick look that had a hint of annoyance in it.
"I am working as quickly as possible, Captain," she stated. "Complete restart of all sensor algorithms in thirty seconds."
"We might not have thirty seconds," Tucker retorted before glancing toward Rick. "Another new toy?" the captain asked grimly.
"Evidently," Eisler replied. "He's running scared now, sir." At the captain's disbelieving look, Rick continued. "If he had any more torpedoes, Captain, he would have used them while we're blind. This is the equivalent of popping smoke, sir." Tucker was silent for a moment.
"What the hell does that mean?" he asked, and Rick grimaced slightly, once more reminded that the captain didn't have the same training that he did.
"Infantry combat tactics, sir," Eisler stated. "To conceal their retreat, a unit throws smoke grenades."
"Sensors coming online," T'Pol declared. A heartbeat later, Rick's data feed came alive, and he glowered at the complete lack of a target. He quickly checked the number of decoy ballutes, noting that two more of them had been destroyed during the firefight. His board chirped as Lieutenant Hayes informed him that the weapons teams were operational and standing by.
"Where is he?" Captain Tucker asked, leaning forward in his command chair as he did.
"Scanning," the first officer replied. She was silent for at least thirty seconds. "I am detecting a debris field approximately seventeen thousand kilometers from our current position." Another moment passed as she input instructions. "Impulse wake ends at this debris field."
"It can't be that easy," the captain muttered, and Rick nodded in agreement. "Any sign of the holo-cloak?" Tucker asked.
"Sensor distortions are making scans unreliable," the Vulcan said as she manipulated the controls at her station. Suddenly, she paused and straightened from her crouch over the board's viewer. One eyebrow was quirked, and she gave Tucker a look that Rick couldn't possibly comprehend. The captain nodded, almost as if she had asked him something, and turned to Eisler.
"I want Remoras loaded," Tucker ordered quickly, "and programmed to target anything with a Romulan hull. If there's no impulse wake, that means he's on maneuverin' thrusters only." The captain's accent, usually barely noticeable, was particularly thick as he spoke.
"Aye, sir." Rick nodded his approval as he keyed in the new instructions for Lieutenant Hayes; use of the Remoras in this manner would be the equivalent of ancient sea-going ships using depth charges to flush out a hiding submarine.
"Lieutenant Mayweather," the captain continued, "slow to one-quarter and stand by for emergency thrust." His attention shifted to Lieutenant Commander Sato-Reed. "Hoshi, keep Starfleet vessels from pursuin'. It's about to get ugly in here."
"Remoras standing by," Rick announced. Tucker nodded, glancing once in T'Pol's direction. The Vulcan was bent over the scanner on her board once more, completely intent on whatever it was she was doing, and gave no hint that she was aware of the captain's look. Despite that, he nodded before looking at Eisler. With a frown, the captain spoke.
"Fire."