USS Alexia
Alexia class strike carrier
NCC-61667
En-Route to Trevelia
"Wait, wait. Hold on. You did what?!" Rela asked, almost exasperated.
Eyos shrugged. "I killed my Captain."
"Why the hell would you do that?!"
"Because he was going to fire on you."
Rela poured two more glasses for her Klingon sister. The sight of a Klingon Captain and a Romulan Marine sharing a drink in the officer's mess was something to behold for the crew of Starfleet's newest ship. The crew was very careful to maintain a respectful distance.
"You Kilvams make no sense," said Rela as she poured another glass of simulated ale, "So just kill your Captain, and the ship is yours?"
"If it makes you feel better, I don't really understand it either. There's a lot of things I don't understand about my people," Eyos replied, sipping the glass.
"I had to kill a boy as well. Vaton. Some idiot child fighting over a dead house because his house supports another house that opposes a house that took my house under the wing. As if any of this actually matters in the long run."
"Yeah, I don't get that either," said Rela, sipping more ale, "I mean all these houses and titles. Why don't you just do what we do? We have a family, and we have the Dahbe. What more do you need at that point?"
Before Eyos could answer the question, they were joined at the table by Logan Macleod, with a pair of drinks in hand. "Captain, Leftenant. Might I have the privilege of joining you?"
"What do you want, varuul?" Rela asked harshly.
Logan sat down and slid the drinks over while he looked at Eyos. "Tell me, Captain. You grew up with Leftenant Kaimeao here, is that right?"
"You might say that," Eyos replied.
"Any interesting childhood stories? I imagine she had some cute little dolls."
Eyos smirked, knowing how the conversation was bound to go. "Not dolls. But we all shared responsibility for a Border Collie named Comrose. Rela had a thing about putting pink bows in her hair."
"Eyos!" Rela shouted as she kicked her leg.
"Pink bows for a dog, eh? Well, that is just too adorable," Logan smiled back.
"I'll kill you if you say one damn word, Hevam!" Rela threatened, reaching for her assault phaser.
Eyos laughed, but the mood quickly turned serious as the ship dropped out of warp and yellow alert sounded through the ship.
"All hands, this is the Captain. We've arrived at Trevelia and we're detecting Orion targets on the surface. All hands to emergency stations. Senior officers to the bridge."
As the overhead comm with Rei's voice spurned the Starfleet crew, Rela's wrist comm bleeped with another, equally serious, order from Kayla.
"Alexia 1-9 to all call-signs Alexia. Stand to. I say again, stand to. Con two carry, weapons safe. Alexia 2-7, report to the bridge on bounce."
Logan rose and waved at the door. "After you, Ladies."
Rela led the way out, while Eyos whispered a final question. "I think he likes you. What do you think?"
"Shut! Up!"
─•~:~•─
Eyos, Rela and Logan stepped out onto the bridge. Logan took his station at tactical, while Eyos and Rela stood on either side of Kayla's chair.
"Well, we're here," Kayla said.
"And where is 'here'?" asked Eyos.
Rei brought up an overlay of the planet. "Trevelia. M-Class but listed as uninhabited. Kind of strange if you ask me, we're out of the way here and well away from any trading or shipping lanes."
"Is there a population down there?" Rela asked.
Kayla answered the question. "There's a pre-warp civilization down there, about twelve million or so. But the really cool thing is this."
She hit some buttons on the XO's terminal, bringing up an overhead view of a modern-looking base.
"That's an Orion Civil Guard base if I ever saw one. And we're getting a transponder code from Faetor. I'd say our cargo is down there."
Eyos studied the screen for a long moment. But she seemed confused. "Something doesn't seem right. Where's Corsair? And why this planet?"
"Yeah, it's kinda fishy. But this is our best chance to recover that cargo. I say we get down there and get it done," Kayla said confidently.
"Agreed. Major, ground combat is your show, what do you need from me?" Rei asked in an uncharacteristically official way.
"All three Raptors, the Ravens to back us up, maybe some gunnery support from you and my other sister?" Kayla replied.
"You'll have it," Eyos replied as she raised her own comm, "Eyos to Worf, Go to first stage alert and ready all weapons."
Rei, in turn, hit a switch on her Captain's chair, "Red alert, stand by to support landing ops!"
"Let's go sis, we got business to get done!" Kayla shouted to her sister. As she turned to leave for the turbolift, Rei drew her attention back for just a moment.
"Major… be careful down there. And good luck."
Kayla smirked back, "I don't believe in luck, Captain. I have ammo."
─•~:~•─
The rear shuttle doors of Alexia opened, and her full complement of auxiliary craft screamed out into the blackness of space.
The Strike Carrier designation wasn't chosen for austerity. While she lacked the space for a full wing, Alexia carried a squadron of the brand-new Raven multi-role fighters. The first joint construction project between Starfleet and the Federation Marines, Raven was built to do everything that Starfleet needed a fighter to do, and at the same time, do everything that the Marines needed a CAS vehicle to do.
The black fighters were twenty-five metres long, with dual rear stabilizers sitting on top of a pentagon with a pair of stub wings on the port and starboard. Compared to the Peregrine she replaced; Raven was an almost ugly design in comparison.
But Raven, carrying a weapons array of pulse phasers, micro-photons and spatial torpedoes was meaner. The pair of Hyper-X Blue series impulse engines under the rear stabilizers made Raven faster. And her built in QC transmitter – operated by a Marine technician sitting beside the Starfleet pilot in the cockpit – was built to engage any target on land, in the sea, and in space.
Alexia carried twelve Ravens in total, backed up by the new MK2 Raptor class tactical shuttle. Where the old Raptors were bulky and ungainly designs, the new Raptor was sleek, equipped with modern shields and weapons, and held an entire series of new vehicles in the rear bay.
"I'm driving," Rela said as she slapped the long, metal barrel of one of the new vehicles.
A lot of people had all but laughed at General Marshall when he unveiled the Thor HMBT (heavy main battle tank). What use was there for a tank in the 25th Century?
Ask the men and women who were with me on Vulcan a decade ago, he had said to the press corps.
"Alright, just don't run me over," Kayla replied. Switching herself to seriousness, she hit a switch on her wrist comm and armoured up. About the only piece of equipment that hadn't changed in the decade or so between the Majors Kaimeao had been the MK5 Molotok Powered Infantry Combat Suit (PICS).
The Borg-designed armour suit still had no real match in the galaxy, especially when compared to the failure that personal forcefields had been, never balancing power, protection, and portability. The Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians and the Breen had all failed to build an equivalent system.
The rest of the Marines in the rear cargo bay armoured up. Most of them were recruits, not much further ahead in their careers than either Kayla or Rela. But Sharkies always held one advantage over their Fishie cousins.
They were always ready to fight.
"We're touching down in twenty seconds, Major. Sensors are showing clear!" the pilot called from the cockpit.
Kayla took up her position in the stack, while Rela clambered into Thor and started the engine. A heartbeat later, the Raptor touched down with a gentle thud, and the rear bay door slammed open into a cold, snowy landscape.
Thor surged out of the bay, followed by Kayla and ten armoured Sharkies. From the other two shuttles, a Wolverine ATV and a Lynx IFV joined the tank. Wolverine replaced the Argo as an FMC-first design for an all-purpose people hauler, being larger and better armed, while Lynx served to fill all the niche roles that other vehicles couldn't fill. In this case, armed with spatial torpedo launchers and laser tracking, anti-air.
Between the fifty-five-armed Sharkies, a tank, two fighting vehicles, and five Ravens flying CAP, there was a truly intimidating amount of firepower staring down the Orion base from Kayla's chosen landing zone.
As the rest of the Sharkies spread out into a covering perimeter, Kayla took a knee and did a scan of the base with her wrist comm. The Orion base was typical of Orion construction, a vaguely green dome surrounded by outbuildings and equipment from a dozen different nations, likely stolen or salvaged from the various raids.
No obvious defenses or targets were visible from the scans. The drone operators sent their HKs into the air, dropping streams of nano-cables up and down the structure. The transponder signal came up immediately, but nothing else that would be useful.
Kayla looked around the area. The Molotok's auto-filters cleared out the blowing snow, so she was able to see as if it was perfectly day. But she couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong.
"Alexia 1-9 to all call-signs," she spoke into her wrist comm, "Advance on the structure to my front. Call targets and be ready to engage. Thor advances to blocking position thirteen. Lynx, move to support."
Each individual call-sign acknowledged Kayla's order, and the MCT began their walking advance. Rela's tank moved forward, the wide turret moving from side to side. Above the Marines, the Ravens swept across the sky before taking a broad circling patrol route.
─•~:~•─
OSN Corsair
Corsair class carrier
In Orbit Trevelia
Satellite 1
"I thought these Federation Marines were supposed to be intelligent. They're walking right into a trap and can't see it five feet in front of their faces."
Tetro was almost in tears at how hard she was laughing. For all the stories she had heard. For all the leaked mission reports she'd read. From Bath'lor, to Titan, Vulcan, Deep Space 9, and countless other operations in their ten years of existence.
It seemed that the Federation Marine Corps was as clueless as any other prey.
"Our ground units report they are almost in range, Miss. Shall I give the order?" asked Laycek.
Her second sat eagerly at the Strategic Ops console, waiting to prove that the Federation was not the master of ground combat that they claimed to be.
Tetro let a smile creep across her face. "Do it."
─•~:~•─
Rela was just starting to get bored when the proximity alarm went off inside the tank. She reached over to her wrist comm and quickly hit the all-call.
"Incoming!"
But as the words left her lips, a dozen micro-photons slammed into the turret armour, rocking the Thor in place on the frozen ground.
She quickly adjusted the monitors to get a better view of the outside. More micro-photons shot out from a dozen different locations and slammed into the advancing Marines. All three vehicles survived the initial blasts – their armour was built to take on much tougher odds – but a dozen foot mobile Sharkies did not.
Behind her in the rear compartment, the gunner set his controls and opened fire with the pintle-mounted XR-219 40mm Auto-cannon and its accompanying XR-216 30mm Chain Gun. On Rela's screens, the heavy tritanium rounds raced back in the direction of the enemy munitions but hit nothing but ice and snow.
Rela slammed her hand on her console, "Hnaev!"
Without a clear target, there was nothing for her to aim the main gun of her tank at, and the deadliest weapon carried by the MCT – the 105mm Nadion Pulse Cannon – would remain stubbornly silent.
"2-7 to any call-sign. I need a target!" she again shouted on the all-call.
No one answered her. Frustrated, she threw the throttle in reverse, and backed the tank up to provide cover to her fellow Sharkies.
─•~:~•─
Kayla slid in on the snow and came to rest behind the starboard tread of Thor. She peeked over and cut loose a half-mag burst from her XR-120 assault rifle, but yet again failed to find a target.
The new XR-120s were lighter and more portable than the XR-118s carried in Uncle Mark's time, but they still needed something to actually hit in order to be effective.
"Does anyone see where that's coming from?!" Kayla shouted as a dozen more Micro-Photons slammed into the side of Wolverine. The ATV was rocked hard and nearly tipped over before righting itself on the four port side tires.
Inside the vehicle, the turret gunner turned his pintle towards the direction of the micro-photons and laced a dozen shots back from the chain gun. Kayla tracked the rounds in her helmet, and watched as the stubbornly flew straight into the snowstorm.
One of the drone operators slid in beside Kayla and linked his display to her helmet. "They gotta be using opti-camo, Major. I've got forty or fifty contacts on motion trackers, but nothing I can lock onto with nano-cables."
"Opti-camo?!" Kayla shouted back, "Where the hell did they get that?!"
Before the Operator could answer, more Micro-photons screamed out from the invisible enemies. This time, the bright red torpedoes found the armoured underside of one of the Raptors, burning through her shields and cutting the tactical shuttle in half.
Kayla had her wrist comm up before the remains of the Raptor even hit the ground. "1-9 to Raptors, pull back! Raven 1-9, report contacts on bounce!"
Three of the Ravens rocketed over the battlefield on full burner, doing a roll to maximize possible sensor coverage. But still, Kayla found herself frustrated.
"Raven 1-9. No positive contacts, falling back to patrol routes," the pilot replied as his craft sailed above her head.
"Hey, Kayla! I've got an idea!" Rela shouted from inside the tank.
"What?!"
Rela clambered out of the tank, slid beside Kayla, and held up her own wrist-comm, "We can't see them, but we know they're moving, right?"
"Right," Kayla answered back.
"So, what if we do what we did that one time to scare Evelyn? Cover Comrose in a blanket?!"
It took a second, but her enhanced mind drew the connection quickly and came up with a new plan.
"Alexia 1-9 to Actual. We need OSP support, but a new package. Listen up."
─•~:~•─
USS Alexia
Alexia class Strike Carrier
NCC-61667
"Does this look right?! I have no idea what I'm doing here…" Logan admitted sadly.
Rei was about to get up to help when Eyos shoved him not only out of the way, but completely clear of the console. She quickly loaded in the needed commands to the console.
"We don't usually shove our idiotic crewmen out of the way, Captain Eyos," Rei said with explosive sarcasm.
"You're lucky this isn't my ship, Captain Rei. I'd have likely stabbed him for that," Eyos replied, seriously.
"Just like your sisters. Is the particle emitter ready?"
"Ready."
Rei sat back down. As much as they pretended that they didn't, the Sharkies and the Fishies were almost co-dependent. The things that a Starship could do – like flood a planet with tachyon particles to defeat cloaked infantry – were still very much in the realm of Starfleet.
And even Uncle Mark would be the first person to admit it.
"Ms Kizuna, activate the main deflector and begin linking up targets for the Marines. They'll need our help after-all."
"Aye Captain," Kizuna replied, hitting the switch on her own console.
At the front of the ship on the viewscreen, a gentle blue beam traced its way down to the planet, surrounding the area that Kayla and her Sharkies had landed in. Tachyon particles had always defeated cloaking devices in space by creating a physical barrier that light particles had to cross before being bent by the cloaking shield. From what she knew about Opti-Camo, the principle worked equally well on the ground.
Kayla owes me one, Rei smiled to herself.
─•~:~•─
Kayla hit her wrist comm with blinding speed, setting up the appropriate fire zones and targets. Her fellow Sharkies reacted much slower than she'd like – having to stop to remind herself that everyone did – but figured it out after a few, long, seconds.
She looked around the field briefly, getting a nod or a thumbs up from everyone. Satisfied that they were ready, Kayla popped up over the tank and shouted out on the all-call.
"Open fire!"
As one unit, thirty-two Sharkies linked up targeting in the helmets and cut loose a furious salvo of tritanium from their weapons. Kayla squeezed the trigger of her rifle, setting the barrel to rest on the tread cover of Thor. The wedges traced back just over two-hundred meters before slamming into their target at the other end.
She couldn't see exactly what she hit but judging from the sound that the wedges made – crunching through metal as she might crush an aluminum pop-can – Kayla was satisfied that her target was dead.
Thor was next. The turret turned to the right, and the gun lined up to its first target. Even with the filters in her helmet, Kayla wasn't quite ready for the impact, as the 105mm cannon rang out with an extremely loud crack. While the recoil of the gun was absorbed by Thor's shocks, she still felt the tremor of the ground shaking as the autoloaders slammed a new round into the breach.
A blink later, the pulse shell slammed into part of the structure. Debris and shrapnel flew away in a dozen directions, and Kayla was assured that whatever was on the wrong side of Thor's Hammer – a slightly smaller version of the main battery mounted on the Vanguard class battleships – was on the long road to Hell.
"Move up! Let's get inside that building!" Kayla ordered.
The three vehicles led the advance, pouring tritanium, micro-photons and phasers into the structure and everything around it. Explosions and shrapnel filled the air, a part of which Kayla found exciting.
But before she could get too excited, a new motion drew her eyes to the sky.
And she screamed. "Cover!"
It took barely the time to count the second in her mind before Kayla felt the blast wave of a photon torpedo fired from high orbit slamming into the structure. She was knocked off her feet, along with everyone else still standing on the snow field.
The Wolverine was obliterated entirely. The Lynx was knocked back and had her turret crushed in on the left side by falling debris, rendering her salvageable but out of action.
Thor tried to crush Kayla underneath her treads. She rolled out of the way just in time, but the larger concern was what happened to the crew inside. She quickly clambered up to the top-hatch and swung the cover open.
"Anyone alive in there?" she called out. A metal hand reached back up, and Kayla hauled the gunner and the comms tech out onto hull of the tank.
"Rela?! Answer me!" she shouted back into the smoky interior.
Slowly – slower than Kayla liked – Rela finally crawled up to the hatch, her distinctive green-coloured Molotok easily standing out against the white snow.
"That hurt-" the Romulan Marine started to say, but a green disruptor bolt caught her between her armoured shoulders. The beam failed to penetrate Rela's armour, but Kayla could feel her sister go limp as she rolled both of them off the tank and onto the snow.
The Tank Gunner fired a burst from his carbine back in the direction of the disruptor bolt. He killed one target, but a second materialized under the tachyon particles and opened a furious salvo, forcing him and Kayla to duck in cover.
"Major! We're compromised, we gotta get out of here or we're gonna get cut off!" The Gunner shouted to Kayla.
Part of her wanted to argue. But the more important part – the part that had been genetically augmented to be a better fighter – knew he was right, and Kayla raised her wrist comm.
"Alexia 1-9 to Actual, our position is not secure. Request evac, now!"
Thanks to the miracle, or curse, that was Quantum Communications, Kayla could hear Kizuna frantically slapping her controls in the background. "Standby 1-9, the tachyon particles are interfering with my transporter locks. I'm going to have to beam you out a few at a time."
The crew of the Lynx, furthest back from the base and Kayla's position were beamed out first, gracefully disappearing into the friendly blue haze of a Federation transporter beam.
Kayla evaluated the options and realized that she couldn't wait for Kizuna to figure out the locks.
"Section two, fall back to the beam out point. Everyone else, lay down suppression!"
Kayla raised her rifle and mag-dumped towards the enemy, with every other Sharkie beside her following suit. The loud cracks of their rifles momentarily drowned out the noise around them, but the enemy returned fire, and disruptor beams loudly plunged off the metal of the burned-out tank.
Section Two beamed out, and the third and final section ran backwards and away from Kayla. Kayla looked down at her sister. "Rela, can you walk?!"
Rela groaned in her armour. "Damnit, I can't. Something's wrong with my back. Just go, I'll be fine!"
Kayla let her rifle hang loose at her side and instead stuck her arms under Rela's, crossing over her chest. "Not a chance in hell, sis. No Marine gets left behind!"
The Gunner fired another long burst from his rifle as Kayla dragged her armoured Romulan sister back. Further ahead, an enemy sniper cut loose with a plasma rifle, and two men behind the Gunner collapsed in a heap of ashes and burnt metal.
"God damnit Major! Move your ass!" the Gunner shouted as he reloaded his rifle. Another dump of fifty tritanium wedges killed the enemy sniper, but his squad mates returned fire and cut down another Marine in a pile of ashes with a concentrated plasma burst.
Finally reaching the beam out point, Kayla slammed her wrist comm. "Actual, 1-9. All clear! Get us out of here!"
But nothing happened, and Kizuna's panicked voice sent a cold chill down Kayla's spine.
"1-9, you're too close to 2-7, I can't separate the transporter signatures. You have to move away about ten feet."
Kayla pounded her fist into the snow in frustration. "Are you fucking kidding me?! Just beam us out!"
A plasma beam slammed into Kayla's shoulder. It didn't penetrate her armour, but it hit hard enough to force her back and away from Rela. Before Kayla could scramble back to her feet, she started to feel weightless as the transporter beam formed around her.
Kayla could only scream.
"Rela!"
─•~:~•─
Rei held onto her chair tightly as Jenkins threw Alexia over. Without warning, fifty Brigands and a swarm of Scorpions had dropped out of warp and began lacing into the ship.
"Logan, where the hell did they come from?!" she shouted back to the tactical station.
She had her answer moments later. Logan zoomed on Corsair dropping out of warp just above Trevelia's moon, surrounded by a cloud of fighters and escorts.
Working in tandem, Worf and Alexia fired up their impulse drives and raced away from the cloud, chased all the way by small fighters. Both ships activated their CIWS systems and filled space with a thunderous volley of disruptor bolts and phaser blasts.
A pair of Scorpions that tried to race ahead of the fleeing ships were instead met by the returning Ravens from the surface. The black Alliance fighters cut loose with their spatial torpedoes. A dozen streaking missiles blotted the Scorpions out of space as the Ravens quickly turned and flew into Alexia's open fighter bay.
"Did we get all the Marines off the surface?!" Rei shouted.
"Almost Captain, I just need-" Kizuna started to reply.
Kayla materialised on the bridge, and almost immediately launched into Rei. "Get me back down there right now! Rela's still on the surface!"
The ship rocked as a Brigand drew in close and buried a salvo of six plasma torpedoes into Alexia. The shields absorbed the impact, and Worf quickly sent the daring Brigand to the depths of hell of a volley of his own plasma torpedoes.
"That's gonna be a little bit tough to pull off, Major, we're kinda in a fight of our own right now!" Rei shouted back.
She stood from her seat and called out more orders. "Helm, full impulse. Evasive pattern Sulu-65. Tactical, full power to all weapons and target at your discretion. Get me a vector on Corsair!"
"Aye Captain!" Jenkins and Logan both replied at the same time.
Alexia shot forward into a roll, while Logan let his phasers dance into dozens of targets all around the two Alliance ships. Lancing orange phaser beams criss-crossed around green disruptor beams fired from Worf, blowing dozens of Brigands and Scorpions out of space in a dazzle of explosions and light.
Kayla walked over to the other side of the tactical console and looked at her other sister. "Eyos, can you get a lock on Rela?!"
The Klingon girl shook her head. "I'm trying, but I can't get through the tachyons."
"Move!" Kayla shouted, gruffly shoving Eyos out of the way. Her hands worked faster than the eye could track as she increased power to a dozen sensor systems, but the clouds of tachyons still blocked Alexia from generating a solid lock.
Logan slammed his firing switch, and a dozen photon torpedoes raced ahead of the ship and shattered a large cruiser in front of her. In his mind, the Cruiser looked almost Breen in design, a far-cry from Orion designs.
"Can you get us any closer to the surface?!" Kayla shouted to the helm.
"I'll try, but-" Jenkins said, but an incoming hail breaking into the ship's comm stopped in his tracks.
Tetro appeared on the viewscreen a heartbeat later and smiled her wicked smile at Rei. "Little Bird, whatever are you doing here? You don't want to get your wings clipped, do you?"
Rei kept sitting, a blatant show of disrespect. "Captain Tetro, this is the second time your forces have fired on Milky Way Alliance vessels. There will not be a third! I order you to stand down, return the cargo you stole from the Romulan Republic, and leave this sector!"
Tetro laughed. "What in all the stars would posses me to do that? This is my nest, Little Bird, not yours."
"Enough!" Rei shouted, "Tactical, lock all weapons on Corsair and destroy her!"
Tetro raised her finger. "You may want to wait on that for a moment, Little Bird. Or would you rather be responsible for the death of this vile little creature?"
Tetro snapped her fingers, and two Orion guards brought a gagged and bound Rela in front the screen, stripped of her armour and thrashing wildly in her restraints.
"Now, I'm sure this creature understands that sacrifice is part of her duty and that you would have no hesitation in killing her to get to me, Little Bird. But I'll wager her sisters might have an issue with that. And if you take the chance to attack to me, you might not be able to stop this."
Logan spoke up next as his console screeched out in alarm. "Captain, they're firing a missile at the surface! I'm reading a Thalaron signature off the warhead!"
"Destroy it!" Rei shouted back.
Logan hit his firing switch, but the phaser beams cleanly missed the long, silver missile, with the spatial torpedoes fired from her CIWS system were intercepted by more Scorpions, sacrificing themselves to block the impact.
Tetro laughed again. "You do have spirit, Little Bird, I'll give you that much. But you won't stop my missile until I leave. I've been firing these things for as long as you've been alive."
She shoved Rela's head into the deck and continued. "And this vile thing's people made my missiles even deadlier. I'm sure you've read about what happened to the Tellarites? Thalaron radiation has such a lovely way of killing, don't you agree?"
"Shut up! Return our Marine and disarm that weapon!" Rei shouted.
Tetro turned her face cold and serious. "I'll do neither of those things, Rude Little Bird. I'm leaving, and I'm taking my cargo and this creature with me. Stop me from leaving and destroy my ship, she dies and so does that planet. Do something about that weapon, and she might die later. The choice is yours. Farewell, Little Bird."
The channel closed. Corsair hesitated in space for just a moment, and then turned to jump into warp.
There wasn't time to yell. Kayla shoved Kizuna off the science station and went to work, typing a flurry of commands at a speed that shouldn't have been possible.
"Eyos, you remember how I taught you about QC bounce-back, right?" she asked quickly.
"Can't forget it," Eyos replied from Tactical.
Kayla looked up at her Captain. "Rei, we're gonna have one shot at this, so you need to trust me. You need to get us in the exact orbital position I'm sending in the comm, and you need to drop the shields to get as much power out of the QC relay as we can. Do you understand?"
Rei wanted to be angry with Kayla, but she knew that saving Trevelia was more important than personal grudges. "Got it. Helm, get us in position. Engineering, standby to transfer power at the Major's orders."
Alexia shot across space and parked into an orbital position "upside-down" if someone was looking at the ship from the outside. Kayla continued to hit her panel at an inhuman speed while Eyos stood at her station in complete confidence.
The ship came to a stop as Kayla looked over at her sister. "Ready?"
"Ready!"
Kayla hit her switch, and the entire bridge darkened as she dumped every scrap of power she could into the QC relay. Nothing was readily obvious to the crew's eyes. But their eyes couldn't see like hers.
A massive amount of quantum energy was blasting out from Alexia's main deflector, racing to the planet, and with any luck, disrupting the missile's computer control.
Eyos' console beeped and she cried back to her sister. "There's the arming code! Sending bounce-back… now!"
Nothing happened, for several long seconds. And then the missile exploded in the upper atmosphere of Trevelia with a brilliant flash of white light.
"Missile has detonated safely, Captain. Not detecting any Thalaron particles. The Major did it," Logan reported.
Rei breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Nice. Okay, stand down from red alert. I want a full damage report in twenty minutes. Any casualties reported?"
"Only the wounded Marines, Captain. I'll get down to sickbay and give the Wizards a hand," Kizuna said as she left the bridge.
Rei turned and looked at Eyos. "Any damage on your own ship, Captain?"
"Worf is ready to fight," Eyos replied confidently.
"Awesome. Alright, lets reconvene and discuss-" Rei started to say before Kayla cut her off.
"We're not going after Rela?"
Rei shook her head. "We're not in any shape for a rescue just yet, Major. We need to check our ship, and we could all use some rest."
Kayla walked dangerously close to Rei. "We are not leaving her behind!"
"No one said we were, Kayla, but we won't do her any good if we chase after her while we're half dead from exhaustion."
"Then give me a Raptor and I'll go after her myself."
"The only place you're going is to sleep, Kayla. I can see the exhaustion in your eyes."
"Don't tell me what to do when it comes to my family Rei!"
Kayla's sharp tone made almost all of the bridge team step back, all except for Eyos.
"Get some rest, Kayla. We'll talk about this later."
"To hell with later! That's my god damn Sister!"
"Get some rest. That is an order, Major."
"And if I disobey that order, Captain?"
"You really want to do this, Major?"
Kayla's hand started reaching for her assault phaser, but Eyos stopped it before it got all the way.
"Come on Kayla. I'm hungry. Show me where the mess hall is."
Kayla stared down Rei for an eternity of thirty seconds. Her blue eyes were beautiful, but they had no fear behind them.
Kayla blinked, and then turned and left the bridge without another word.
─•~:~•─