"What happened?" Captain Saben demanded as he waved some of the smoke that choked his bridge out of his face. His helmsman was futilely working his controls and he slapped them in frustration.
"I have negative helm control, even the manual systems are out."
"Science?" Saben barked, afraid that one more volley would destroy his ship any second. "It appears we have been struck by some form of pulsed ionized energy sir. I think it's specifically designed to damage or disable control systems by overloading them. It's going to take a few minutes to flush the systems and reboot the core." "Why would they disable us…" his question drifted off and he slapped his communicator on his chest. "Security, I want cordons around vital areas of the ship, prepare to repel boarders!" He ordered sternly, never thinking that he would ever have to issue that order.
"Captain, engineering here, we have some serious problems with the warp core, with our safety systems fried by this ion charge, the core is running very hot, unless we can institute a shutdown in ten minutes we may have a breach." "Engineering, I may want that breach." Saben replied darkly. "Sir?" "We have hostile boarders on the way, we may not be able to repel them. We cannot allow a Federation starship to fall into the hands of an enemy."
"Understood sir." The reply was stern but quiet. Saben got out of his command chair and walked over to the science station. "I'm going to want to initiate a self destruct." His science officer frowned as he tried something on his console. "It's doubtful we can initiate one right now sir, the main computer core is down, it cannot be accessed let alone do any recognition's. We are completely dead in the water." "How long for a hard reboot?" "At least five minutes." "Do it!"
"Sir, security reports sighting a transport inbound, they're heading for the shuttle bays!" His communications officer reported. "Depressurize the shuttle bay and vent all oxygen into space, let's not make things easy for them." He replied and turned back to his science officer. "Do whatever it takes, but I want a self destruct running as soon as possible." 'Aye sir."
"Weapons?" he turned to his tactical officer. "Sir, there's nothing." He pressed several buttons on his touch pad with no effect. "Besides, we didn't even put a dent in their shields. According to my last reading on their shields, they were operating several orders of magnitude higher than our own shield ratings. These guys put Borg shields to shame sir." "Who in the galaxy are they?" The ship rocked for a moment. "Security reporting, we have boarders."