There was no time to recover from the sphere builder's visit, at once the Enterprise was getting battered by phaser rounds.
"Sir! I'm not sure what any of these do!" yelled a frantic Ensign, his board covered with new controls.
They couldn't take much more of this, it was gonna be taking a big chance but- "Ensign power up all systems, I want everything online now!"
From the outside, the Enterprise was a beautiful sight, the shimmering of energy shields along with the self-repairing hull made it a serious force to be reckoned with.
The sound of phasers and photon torpedoes was muffled by the deflector shield surrounding them. Trip would have time to marvel at it later, right now he had to find a solution which didn't involve mass slaughtering.
"Malcom, target the Andorian's engines and weapons."
"Sir, with all due respect we don't have any way of knowing how powerful these phasers are, a wrong shot and we could destroy the entire ship."
Trip nodded, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Set them at half power to be safe."
A nod was the Englishman's only response as he set to work.
"Commander" Travis spoke up from his seat at the helm, "Life support has been restored, and I'm not sure but it looks like the hull is repairing itself." His voice was filled with wonder, a response Trip wished they had time for. "Ensign take us around them, full loop of both ships, try to give their weapons a hard target."
"Aye Sir".
Aboard the Andorian Vessel Kumari:
"Commander! They've disabled our phaser banks, both impulse and warp are offline!"
Shran's mind was working furiously, where had this vessel come from? And more importantly, why were they helping the blasted Vulcans. Just a second ago this mystery ship had been crippled, moments away from destruction.
He would have broken something if there was anything left on the bridge that wasn't already in a state of disrepair.
The rocking stopped suddenly, "Lieutenant, full sensor sweep, I want to know what in the three hells is going on"…
Back on the Enterprise:
"Sir the Vulcan's are closing in on the Andorians".
"Hail them" came Trip's response, he didn't want to fire on the Vulcans, but he had serious doubts this was gonna be resolved by friendly chit chat.
"No response" reported the Ensign at the communications console.
Everyone had calmed down considerably now that their lives were no longer in danger, and personally Trip was itching to take a look at all these new systems. But that would have to wait until they got some more answers, and he intended to get them. They now knew that they were dealing with time travelers of a sort, and that for some reason those damn light bulb things wanted to kill off humanity, or did originally. Due to Daniels, Trip guessed, the Enterprise had survived the mass extinction. It almost made him want to smirk, Daniels had always caused them nothing but trouble, but that probably wasn't an objective way to look at it. But hey, everyone's entitled to their own opinion of the neighborhood scoundrel.
"No response Sir".
The crewman's report whipped him from his revere. It was go time apparently. "Target their weapons and propulsion systems, lower power to the phasers by ten percent."
They had to take into account that the Vulcan ship was much more heavily damaged.
"Yes commander"
Aboard the Vulcan Vessel T'khut:
"Captain, unidentified vessel is locking weapons."
An eyebrow was raised in response, the mystery ship's intentions were themselves unknown. "Full evasive, continue assault on the Kumari."
It wasn't long before the crash of phaser fire rocked the Cruiser, their shields were surprisingly inadequate against the new comer's weapons.
"Weapons and engines are down Captain, Engineering reports insufficient data to estimate time of repair".
"We are being hailed".
No eyebrow was lifted, "Open the channel"…