"Shields down to 20%! Warp Stabilizers are down, but the containment units are working fine. " Trip worriedly looked down to Archer, who had a gash on his head from when the view screen had been blown out. Phlox was hurriedly attending to poor Mayweather who had taken the brunt of the blast, trying not to be in the way of Archer as he took the helm of the ship. Enterprise per her namesake was not letting the enemy have it easy. Several of the enemy spheres had been disabled or driven off. The vanguard having been given a bloody nose. Hopefully it would buy the time needed to make their deaths worth it.
Worth saving the Earth from them.
"Captain! Enterprise wasn't built like a fighter craft!" Trip and T'Pol looked at each other as Hoshi screamed. "I can hear the hull-plating buckling from the stress already."
Archer chose not to respond. He was pushing the ship hard, harder than she had been rated for, but that had been in peace. Which this wasn't.
Archer was on the front line of a war.
Anyone watching the battle would have described Archer's flying erratic and random. They would also tell you that it was likely the only thing that had allowed the little Earth ship to survive this long.
Archer felt another barrage of hits. 'Dammit! Thought I had gotten past those.' He heard the damage. The main impulse engine regulator relays were damaged, leaving him with 50% engine power. The shields were down, and the hull had been breached in the shuttle bay, no one was down there so thank God for small favors. "Trip, I think its about time we dug down deep and gave it all we got don't you?" It was a reference that he'd set up long ago in case the ship had been taken over again. It was the order to destroy the ship after passing in close to the enemy.
"Captain, I forgot to tell you that I just told that one of the Vulcans has finished that special batch of nanobots you wanted. Though why you'd want a bunch of nanobots who would emit high levels of UV radiation on a self-discriminating frequency I wouldn't know." Phlox was at the door to the turbo lift when another volley hit, making sparks fly from the Captain's chair, noticeably vacant.
"Get them down to the transporter room and tell the tech to be ready to send them over to the ships we can beam them over to them as he sees openings. We only get one shot at it."
Phlox wanted to express his concern over his refusal of medical treatment, but Archer had already turned back to the helm, blocking everything that was not important to this battle out. His exit was marked by another barrage, this one landing in the crew quarters area of C deck, 10 refugees dead.
Archer would weep later. If there was a later. He flew through the enemy fleet once more, this time depositing a little present in each one .
The nanobots were programmed with two functions. The first was a simple replication protocol. Every two minutes each nanobot would duplicate itself, a process taking a minute given the right amount of materials. The second function was to scan the host, and fire a concentrated ray of UV radiation into the nervous system of it, causing overall decay and hopefully death.
These functions worked well. Their deployment via the air was effective enough to kill 97% of those who were on board the vessel.
The 3% who were left, or rather the one woman, were able to have their immune system interface with the nanobots. The secondary nanobot protocol was changed. Instead of emitting ultraviolet radiation, it now followed the immune system's main directive: to attack and destroy damaged cells, and help replace damaged cells quickly by protecting them during their growing phase.
She had adapted.
Admiral Forest was 15 minutes out, the pedal on the Columbia's engines not just to the metal, but to the deck plating on the deck below. It was likely the new ship would need to be towed back by the Vulcans after this, but he didn't care. As long as he got there in time the whole damn fleet could be towed for all he cared. The other reinforcements were only seconds behind, similarly pushing themselves hard.
When he had moved the fleet out the outcry from the Earth government had become an avalanche. He had gotten them to shut up (and likely gotten them to decide his early retirement) when he had told them they should be thankful he wasn't heading towards them with weapons armed.
'Hold on, just a little longer...' Forest quietly cheered. They had Enterprise on the long-range scanners, and she was giving them hell.
It was likely fortunate for him he did not have the enemy fleet of 50 spheres in range, or else he'd have realized that the fight was just beginning.