A/N: Another short chapter I'm afraid, but at least the story is moving! No special guest stars this time - a rarity for me, I know - but it won't be long before me and DrZevil are up to our usual antics again! Enjoy!
Mirror Lydana sat in her captain's chair, looking thoroughly pleased with herself. By seizing the Steadfast, she had gotten one up on her do-gooder counterpart, and she would soon make said counterpart rue the day she had crossed…herself.
However, Mirror Lydana was still going to carry out her counterpart's instructions, albeit for her own reasons - first of which was to keep the other from learning too quickly what she had done.
"Captain, we're approaching our destination," one of her officers informed her - she hadn't learned everyone's names yet - and she swung her feet off the arm of the chair and sat up straighter.
"Very good. Bring us out of warp, but keep us cloaked."
The ship dropped back to impulse speed, a planet of blue and green masses swiftly growing larger in the viewscreen.
"Bring us into the shadow of Bajor, away from Terok Nor," she ordered, watching intently. She had left the task force behind intentionally, so that she could act and get away without having to worry about them first, but it did have the downside of leaving her without other ships distracting the space station.
No matter, she thought, when this is done we will be gone so fast they won't catch us anyway.
"Charge weapons, prepare to drop cloak," she added, not taking her eyes from the screen.
"What's our target?"
"Forget my title again and I shall personally carve open your chest and pull out your heart," Lydana warned. "Your target is the planet."
There was a sudden, deathly silence on the bridge, the crew staring at her as if she had gone mad.
"You…you can't be serious? Ma'am?"
"I can be and I am," Lydana answered coldly. "Now, if the next words I hear are not 'target locked' or words to that effect, someone is going to die very, very horribly."
There was some beeping as the officer worked his console, then a moment later:
"Target…target locked, ma'am."
"Very good," Lydana said, before pulling one of her new long-barrelled phaser pistols and shooting the man without a backward glance. "Now, I need someone with a stronger stomach at tactical, and I would hope that the next person to step up is ready to do what I ask without almost bursting into tears. Who will it be?"
There were the sounds of a brief scuffle behind her, followed by the gurgling of an officer being stabbed in throat, and Lydana turned to see who had taken her offer.
A woman with black hair and cold, murderous eyes stared back at her from the Tactical station, her hands behind her back as she awaited further orders.
"Oh yes, Lydana said with a girn, "I like you much better. Drop cloak, fire all weapons!"
The dreadnought shimmered back into view, and immediately began firing all of its weapons at the planet below. Beam arrays carved giant furrows, photon torpedoes obliterated mountains and blasted new craters into the land, whole towns and communities were razed…and then the phaser lance fired.
Designed to cripple cruisers, the lance bit deep into the surface of Bajor, annihilating an entire city and the ground beneath it. Magma welled up from the site like blood from a wound, the landscape irrevocably changed and the climate ruined.
Mirror Lydana looked at the damage dispassionately, and leaned back into her chair, pulling one leg up to rest her foot on the chair edge.
"Re-engage the cloak," she ordered quietly, "and make for the Badlands. I have a new toy and I intend to put it to use."
"Captain, we have a problem."
Mirror Lydana sighed and rubbed at her nose ridges, unconsciously echoing her counterpart.
"Do tell."
Her new tactical officer continued with her report, her tone one of detached disinterest.
"There is an existing portal back to the other universe, however it is being blockaded by ships from the task force you betrayed."
To illustrate her point, she put it on the main screen, and Lydana eyed them coldly. Nothing that could individually match her stolen vessel for power, but there were more of them than her. If nothing else, it would provide an excellent assessment of her ship's capabilities…
"Very well," she said, more annoyed than anything, "drop cloak and prepare for battle."
"They're hailing us," a young man reported from comms, and Lydana rolled her eyes.
"Fine, on screen."
The screen changed to the scowling face of a female Klingon, and Lydana vaguely recognised her from the briefing.
"I am General Vakna Kuranu, and now I know you for the honourless p'taQ you are! You are not the honourable Admiral Kassai, merely a pale imitation, and you shall die as such! Have you any last words before you meet your gods?"
Lydana sniffed disdainfully, idly toying with a lock of her hair.
"It's funny you mention my dear counterpart, General," she mused, "because my being here was her idea. Everything I have done, everyone I have killed or left to die, you can lay squarely at her feet, because she chose to use me rather than kill me when she had the chance. If you survive this encounter, you can take it up with her."
She waved a hand and the channel was cut, and with cold menace she gave her command.
"Fire the lance."
Kuranu's powerful Negh'var warship was split in half, as the phaser lance decimated its shields and severed the neck from the rest of the hull. As it did, the Steadfast opened up with all of its beam arrays, hammering the shields of the vessel's compatriots, shortly followed by a wide spread of torpedoes. The blockading ships returned fire, but the opening barrage from the massive dreadnought had done all it needed to - weakened the opposing response enough for the Steadfast to simply park apart its foes in short order. Once the first vessel exploded in a flare of intense white light, its warp core ripping the ship apart from the inside out, the others followed rapidly.
The Steadfast moved forwards with renewed purpose, shoving aside the drifting wreckage that had been ships mere moments earlier, and it re-cloaked as it slipped through the portal back to 'Prime' universe.