Stardate Classified (2372

There's never a whole lot of warning when an apocalyptic attack is going to happen.

Sure, hindsight is twenty-twenty to every armchair general and historical pundit, but in the moment there's never a whole lot of warning. One of two things occurs: A last second alarm, some brainiacs in a room of computers scrambling like mad, and, in this line of work, one unlucky bastard's boots on the ground. Or, when the universe is feeling dicey, it's just a regular Starfleet enlistee who gets lucky, but these aren't the kind of missions Starfleet gets sent on.

In times like this, when Starfleet won't even learn about it until it's all been declassified ten years from now, the situation plays out almost exactly like the first option. Today is one of those days, and for the elite members of the Operations and Regulators squad, or OARS for short, these days are coming along more and more frequently. Tom Shepard, the man who helped design and train the entire field team, is the unlucky bastard in question who gets to put his boots to the ground today.

An Archer-class starship has been stolen by terrorists. It was set to be decommissioned at the old Delphic Expanse boneyard, where all old starships go to rest, but was hijacked at the last minute. Now on a crazy, uncontrollable run to Earth, barreling past entire systems at warp seven, its final resting place is set to be somewhere between San Francisco and Old Vegas- about 2,900 kilometers beneath that middle point, to be precise. Impact alone will only kill hundreds, but in the next half second when it reaches the Earth's core the death toll will rise to the billions in a matter of moments.

The kind of accident that all those safety nets are designed to avoid can always be outwitted if you're crazy enough to do the unthinkable, and most people in the galaxy prefer to keep things simple: Wars of attrition, of moral victories, of total annihilation that leaves the opponent alive to mock. The last time someone waged a little war with this kind of attitude they were still using plasma pistols and ferrying around MACO squads. Today, however, a gang of murderers, dissidents, or simply terrorists have decided they want to revive that unthinkable tactic.

The Archer-class was designed to go far, fast, and never be noticed- a scout that more often than not doubled as a Section 31 black operations ship. Today, it's about to fulfill that design to perfection. The only trouble is, the older the Archer-classes became, the more unreliable, and more to the point, unstable, their warp cores became. They had to power down every hour to real space for two minutes before they could jump to warp again. A fatal flaw, one that lead to the decommissioning and scrapping of nearly every single one, but one that can be taken advantage of by Tom Shepard in one, last, desperate attempt to stop this attack.

Tom Shepard felt the hull plates rumble as they came out of warp and unstrapped himself from the crash webbing. Jumps like this weren't made with the same kind of lackadaisical attitude Starfleet cruisers had, with everyone freely walking about and not so much as a seatbelt in sight. OARS got the short end of the stick: Effective, minimalistic design, where the cushy carpets and captains' seats were traded for crash webbing and metal benches. The Raven-class had many uses over the years, and it had long since become a favourite of operators like Shepard. Sleek, low-profile, but able to hold its own in a firefight with a highly modifiable interior. This particular ship was named Bluejay.

"We're coming up on them, Shep," Lieutenant Ping said over the intraship intercom, "By the time we get in position, you'll have about forty-five seconds to get onboard before you become space dust."

It wasn't often that Shepard had to start an operation like this. Usually his work required a lot of waiting, skulking in the shadows, and getting real comfy inside a meter-wide ODN conduit line for hours at a time, but when things got busy, they tended to do so all at once, and this was exactly that kind of operation. Other than the intended target, an estimated time of arrival, and an educated guess at the number of hijackers on the Archer-class, they really had no idea what they were getting into.

What kind of weapons the hijackers were carrying, their species, their allegiances, whether or not this was a professional mission or not, all of that was up in the air, and would remain so until Shepard got onboard and started his mission. In the meantime, all he had was theories and speculation, much of which he compartmentalized and tucked away in his mind, leaving his mind open to focus on the mission.

He ran a last-minute systems check on his extreme environment suit. Jumping from ship to ship would expose him to a lot of space in a short amount of time, and there was no telling what the inside of the Archer-class was like, whether it had gravity or oxygen at all were the types of intel that fell under the unknown section. Quite frankly, even the simple fact of jumping from ship to ship fell under unknown. Very few people had ever done it, and even less had done so successfully.

The only name that came to mind was Charles Tucker III from the first Enterprise program. At high warp he had rappelled between Enterprise and Columbia, a suicide mission if ever there was one, under a strict time limit. The fact that he had done so in 22nd Century gear made it no less impressive. But nobody ever seemed to ask him about that in the few interviews he gave, shame.

Shepard was prepared to do something not so dissimilar, just without the high-warp factor.

Right now, Lieutenant Ping was piloting the ship to hang just above the Archer-class, relying on the Bluejay's unique hull plating to keep it invisible to anything but the naked eye. Once in position, Shepard would use a modified grappling hook to rappel down, land on the hull, and find a way inside without being detected, and before the ship went to warp again. Not even easy in theory, which meant putting it into practice would certainly be an experience.

All systems good, Shepard secured his helmet, checked his gear pack, and grabbed hold of the rope. He turned his eyes to the red alarm light hanging on the wall and waited.

The Bluejay shuddered to a stop and the red alarm light blinked twice, and then turned green. Shepard instinctively took a deep breath, before slowly forcing it all out. One of the worst things you could do in the vacuum was hold your breath- unless you wanted your lungs to pop like party balloons in a bed of nails. He tightened his grip on the rope, kept his arms and legs coiled, and waited.

The bay doors beneath his feet fell open and the vacuum of space began its violent rampage to remove the room of all its oxygen. Shepard could feel it pulling down on him, threatening to rip him free and into the abyss, but his grip was good. In the next moment, the grappling hook shot out at high speed, yanking Shepard with it. Stars twinkled all around him, and the sound of his own blood moving through his veins became the only noise in the universe.

He shifted himself around, so he was now facing headfirst towards the hull of the Archer-class. The grappling hook only had enough cable to make it three-fourths of the way there, which meant his next moves had to be perfectly timed. A counter on the top right of his helmet's viewscreen quickly ticked down, slowing only as the weightlessness of space began to take effect.

Right before the line reached the end, Shepard pulled back and launched himself off. The cable snapped to and jerked backwards behind him. If he had held on even a second longer, it would have rebounded him right towards the Bluejay, and Earth would be getting about a dozen more moons. Instead, just as he'd prepared, he was now falling, subjective as that term was, the last hundred feet to the Archer-class. Most of the ship's windows were dark, aside from the bow, and he could see a few figures moving about, especially close to the bridge.

Shepard's boots made contact with the hull, automatically magnetizing.

Shepard tapped on the underside of his wrist, sending a coded signal back to Ping and the Bluejay. Sure enough, the little ship began to pull away, making distance fast. With thirty seconds left, Shepard couldn't stay to watch it go, and he got to work.

Approximately ten meters to his left was an evacuation hatch. Mechanical, not connected to any electrical systems, a perfect entrance when you didn't want anyone to know you were coming. Moving as fast as he could, Shepard clomped his way over.

Twelve seconds remaining once he reached it. No time to cut into it, he'd just have to hope it wasn't welded shut or damaged in any way. Taking hold of the small level with both hands, Shepard yanked upwards, making agonizingly slow progress. It wasn't damaged, but without ever having been used it might as well have been.

Five seconds and an alarm chirped in his helmet, warning him that the Archer-class' bussard collectors were warming up again.

Wrenched free, cutting up the gloves of his suit in the process, the hatch flew open and Shepard dove inside, hauling the heavy door shut behind him as he did so.

The sudden shift to warp slammed him to the side, and the impact with the wall resonated through to his bones. Artificial gravity caught him and promptly dropped him to the floor right after, knocking the wind out of him at the same time. Some infiltrations went better than others, but he couldn't have done it better under the circumstances.

Shepard began stripping off the space suit, quickly hiding it in an empty cargo box. He checked his hands, thankful to see their brief exposure to space hadn't done anything other than some surface damage. Nothing he needed to take care of now, especially with a new timer starting.

Underneath the space suit, Shepard was wearing the standard issue OARS tactical suit. An all black, one piece, coverall, decorated with pouches, harness attachments, and pockets, a unique way of giving him near invisibility in the shadows. Human eyes wanted patterns, discernable shapes, but the disruptive patterning of the pockets and pouches, varying size and location, could fool even a trained eye in low light conditions. The unique fibers used in the suit itself also helped, trapping and diffusing light in most circumstances. It wasn't bad on defense either.

Using the Federation's latest classified methods, the armour that coated the suit not only moved when he moved, thus eliminating the movement hampering that came with most armours, but could withstand even a high-level phaser blast at a ten-meter distance. Anything closer would vaporize the armor first, which still gave him more opportunity than most guys did in combat. Code-named Checkmate Armor, it certainly was an advantage when things got hot. Beneath all that, a special P'Jem type weave allowed his body temperature to be maintained in nearly all conditions.

In addition to all that, there were a few items that Shepard kept on hand for each mission. Even if he considered most gadgets and gizmos burdensome, and by extension preferred to not use them, some things were too good to not use. He couldn't go jumping into places like this like it was the stone age, hoping a few whistles and tossed pebbles would achieve his objectives.

A type-2b phaser pistol, nicknamed by plenty of operators the 'hornet', was his sidearm of choice. Unlike the commonly issued type-2 that was standard issue among Starfleet, the 2b was much more limited. It had three settings that Shepard thought of as "Stun", 'Kill', and 'Vaporize'. The vaporize setting came in handy when cutting through bulkheads, kill was good in a pinch when things got loud, and stun was his go to. It had a limited power pack which could be recharged at a variety of common power sources, but meant he had to pick and choose his targets carefully.

On his wrist was a miniaturized computer, complete with touchscreen. It could give him relative position to his surroundings, usually with pre-downloaded maps of the areas he was set to be in, connect him via subspace text to his handlers at OARS, allow him to make and keep notes, take photographs on a limited memory card, and could also function as an alarm clock. It had a much more scientific name, but Shepard and the other OARS members preferred to call it the same name operators had been calling it for centuries, an OPSAT, or Operational Satellite Uplink.

Rounding out his equipment were two stun grenades, a few sticky microphones that he could use to send or receive audio, lockpicks for both physical or electronic needs, a flexi-cam rod, a vintage Fairbairn-Sykes combat knife, and a specially modified VISOR. The VISOR, in particular, came in handy more often than anything else. Programmed for thermal, night, electromagnetic, and sonar visions, Shepard never went on an operation without it. Adding to that, bootlegged versions were becoming more and more common on the less fortunate worlds and colonies, which meant that just slipping it on gave him an automatic disguise.

While Tom Shepard knew he could get by without most of it, these gadgets were oftentimes vital to his job, and they were part of what made him one of the best field operatives OARS had in its arsenal.

With all gear accounted for, Shepard slipped on the VISOR and took a look around in thermal and sonar. They distorted his vision in unique ways, and it took a new operative some time to get used to. Shepard simply saw them as different hats he could put on or take off with ease. Thermal turned the world into a calm shade of blue, but any heat signatures, like guards, would be lit up in shades of orange and red. Sonar was like being underwater in a pool of static, where your only sense of direction was when the sonar would ping to reveal the outlines of objects or people.

Thankfully, neither one picked up anyone or anything around him.

The little grey-green screen came to life as he tapped the OPSAT. Shepard pulled up a map of the Archer-class and pinpointed his location, slowly drawing a mental map of the best way to reach the bridge, including extra paths in case he needed to double back or take the long way around. He'd studied Archer-class schematics on the trip here from Talarian territory and memorized them, but a little review never hurt anyone.

Drawing his phaser, Shepard began making his way towards the bridge. He'd do his best to stick to the shadows and service tunnels, but he'd have to tag and eliminate each of the hijackers on the way to the bridge, which would certainly complicate things, especially since he'd most likely have to do it one at a time. He could run and take down anyone on the way, but a protracted firefight would only benefit the hijackers, so slow and steady it was.

It would help if he had contact with the rest of his team at OARS, but without knowing what kind of setup the hijackers had they were on strict radio silence unless absolutely necessary. No reason for an errant signal to trigger the alarm and get these guys all jumpy. Still, there was a certain comfort in having that voice in his ear, whether he was sleeping in a ditch or actively slicing a computer surrounded by mercenaries, it gave him a sense of connection to the world back home.

But sentimentality didn't mean a whole lot in this line of work, and Tom Shepard was a bonafide professional. The mission would get done, on time, and nobody would even know he was ever here. If he was captured, nobody would know who he was connected to, and nobody would come to rescue him. That was the balancing risk for having such freedom to do what was necessary, to do the kind of things the Federation president and the stuffed shirts in Starfleet would be horrified if they learned about, and Shepard accepted it every day he laced up his boots.

The sudden scuff of boot on carpet forced Shepard back into the shadows, his back flat against the wall, his breathing momentarily paused. Ten minutes since infiltration he hadn't run into so much as a rat, but he knew the moment he saw his first well-lit hallway things were going to get more interesting.

He waited, slowly resuming his breathing as the steps came closer. No chance to slip his VISOR down to keep a track on the guy through sonar, which meant his training and instincts were all he'd have. The phaser in his hand was powered down, the hum was impossible to miss in near silence, but his thumb was on the switch.

A figure stepped into view, pausing at the t-junction. He gave a quick, cursory glance down both halls, then turned around and prepared to go back down the well-lit hallway. The kind of routine of a man who has been doing this for the last hour and hasn't seen a damn thing. Shepard enjoyed running into guys like that, bored and careless made his life a whole lot easier.

The soft whine of Shepard's phaser beam caught the man right in his neck, just between his helmeted head and armoured torso, and he promptly collapsed in a heap, his rifle clattering to the floor. Wasting no time, Shepard hooked the man under his arms and dragged him out of the light and into the shadows, the rifle, attached by a sling, followed behind.

Feeling a pulse, Shepard removed the man's helmet. He was alive, but Shepard had stunned his entire central nervous system by hitting him in the neck, he wouldn't be getting back up for another six hours at best. Pushing his VISOR up, Shepard took a look at him.

Human, male, late thirties. One scar across the bridge of his nose, and enough frown lines to show he'd been through years of stress. He was well built as humans went, but not the kind of shape that indicated military service of any kind. Shepard slipped up the man's sleeve, looking for any kind of indication of a chain code or an identifying marker.

Bingo.

The two-inch isolinear rod was implanted just under the skin, and a quick scan with the OPSAT confirmed Shepard's hunch.

Isolinear identification rods were common in Cardassian prisoners, especially those who came from outside their and the Bajorans' territory, and Shepard had seen more than enough humans returned with the scars from their removal. The number on this one, according to the OPSAT, indicated this man had been a Cardassian prisoner since 2362, and the intelligence files said he had escaped during a riot in 2368. He certainly bore the hallmarks of a man who'd been imprisoned by the Cardassians for that long.

Using the man's belt and the rifle's sling, Shepard fashioned restraints for his arms and legs. Even if he wasn't waking up any time soon, no reason to risk it. Satisfied with his work, Shepard kicked the rifle out of reach and resumed his work.

His VISOR's sonar couldn't pick up anyone around the corner, and the electromagnetic view mode couldn't find any cameras. The coast was clear, at least until the next corner.

Staying low, Shepard quickly made his way through the hall. Light was his worst enemy, and he aimed to get out of its glare as quickly as possible. It made him feel exposed, naked, and went against every instinct he'd honed over the years. So, Shepard bit down on the feeling, focusing instead on just running until he could get out of the light.

Three more corridors, all well-lit up, before Shepard finally got a chance to slink into the shadows again, and not a moment too soon. A pair of guards walked into view, in lockstep, mere seconds after he hid himself away. They, like the other man, wore body armour and helmets, and uniquely grey and orange tunics. Totally nondescript, anonymous, nothing that could tell you anything about them until you got up close.

That gave less credence to a theory he'd had when they started this op, about a bunch of insane martyrs destined to die for whatever crazy cause they thought worthwhile. Guys like that didn't live for obscurity, they wanted their names to go down in history. Dressed like this was security conscious, and it assured total anonymity to anybody doing surveillance. The kind of thing a professional would do.

Given the former prisoner he'd encountered earlier, Shepard gathered this was a mixed crew. Some just there for the warm body factor, something Shepard used to describe guards who were a non-factor in the overall threat assessment, and others who were veterans running the whole ship. No telling who he'd run into or when, but at least he clocked these two as professionals. Shepard did his best to try and listen to anything they were saying, but their helmets muffled their words.

Taking a breath, his legs coiled, ready to pounce from his crouched position, Shepard waited until they were right in front of him. Launching himself from his hiding place, Shepard loosed a phaser blast to the man farthest from him. Instinctively, the closer man ducked down, allowing the beam to sail harmlessly over his head and strike his pal straight in the chest. However, him being lower left him straight in Shepard's past, and he was hit with a solid chop block.

Shepard quickly rolled to the man's back, locking his legs onto his hips, placing one bicep under his chin and placing pressure on the back of his head with his free hand. Shepard held on as the man struggled for a few seconds before falling unconscious to Shepard's blood choke.

A simple but effective manuever, it required a lot of practice to pull off without killing a man. It cut off blood on the carotid arteries and quickly put anyone to sleep within moments, which meant that, if applied correctly, anything longer than ten or twenty seconds could kill the victim. There was no risk of that occurring with Shepard.

By the time he was done, the partner was slumping down beside them.

Shepard untangled himself, shooting the partner a second time in case the armour had taken the brunt of the blast.

As with the prisoner, Shepard checked their pulses, then removed their helmets.

One Klingon, one Andorian.

Professional men, military history most likely. Neither could be older than Shepard, but that wasn't saying much. The Andorian had neither of its antennae, a tactic Shepard had heard was common among the Imperial Guard's black operations staff. The Klingon looked like every other Klingon, nothing special to him, not even so much as a house insignia. Shepard used the OPSAT and snapped pictures of both of them, then restrained them in the same way he had the first man. Dragging them into the dark corner he had used as cover, Shepard checked the charge on his phaser and continued forward once more.

A human former prisoner, a likely ex-military Klingon, a black operations Andorian. Nothing seemed to tie the three together, and that bothered Shepard. Even genocidal maniacs had a common theme of logic, something that linked them to their goal.

Instinctively, Shepard went through the big players in his mind. It was standard practice he'd picked up over the years, helped him stay focused on the mission and let him think about, or eliminate, the most obvious groups behind whatever mission he was on.

The Klingon Empire would never do something like this, at least not the modern incarnation. The Klingons of the 23rd century maybe, when they were filled with leaders like Kang, T'Kuvma, and L'Rell, but not the Klingon Empire of today. There was no honour in destroying an opponent's planet like this- not when you could bomb it into a wasteland. Even rogue Klingons held themselves to some twisted honour, and he couldn't imagine any of them were rich or smart enough to make a move like this.

The Cardassian Union had been a thorn in the Federation's side for decades, and their cruelty knew few boundaries. They were the type of people willing to do anything to win, and he'd tangoed with more Obsidian Order agents than he'd prefer. There was hardly a deadlier or more cunning intelligence group in the entire galaxy, but they tended to stick to ploys that could never be traced back to them. Even a former Cardassian prisoner would be too much of a risk for them, because even if Shepard never made it off the ship, they couldn't be sure he wouldn't transmit any data off-ship before that point.

The Andorians had been drifting away recently from their centuries-long relationship with the Vulcans and Earth, but Shepard found it hard to imagine that anybody, at any level of their government or military, would ever put the green light on a mission like this. The refugee crisis alone caused by the total destruction of Earth would put a strain on Andoria the likes of which never seen before, probably tanking their entire economy and government in the process.

The Romulan Star Empire was always a likely culprit, and they often manipulated plots from two and three levels beyond. Deniability was a hallmark of Romulan operations, as was apathy. Still, the Romulans had their own perverted sense of honour. Not even the Tal'Shiar, the semi-rogue intelligence arm of their Empire, would dare do something like this. Regardless of their innocence, it would put a target on their back so big they'd probably collapse within a year from retribution forces.

If it was the Tholians this ship would be a hell of a lot hotter. The Gorn wouldn't work with other species. The Grazers were in a constant state of civil war. The Talarians were xenophobic in the extreme. The Ferengi could care less. Section 31 was constantly collapsing and being restructured by the very nature of its operatives, and cared more about screwing around with Starfleet operations than they did orchestrating terror attacks.

The didn't leave many options, but the one that was left gave Shepard pause.

The Breen Confederacy, the Alpha Quadrant's rarely seen boogeyman. Nobody knew what their government was really like, or even who the Breen really were, but they were prolific as bounty hunters, saboteurs, slave drivers, miners, pirates, and, for OARS specifically, extremely dangerous opponents. The Breen refused to speak any language other than their own, and their operatives had wreaked havoc on Federation worlds for years. Shepard had never had to face one himself, but the reports from other agents left very little to the imagination. The only rules they operated on were their own, and it seemed there was very little off-limits to them.

It was time to get some actionable intel.

His OPSAT said he was one turbolift away from the command bridge, and there was no other way there. Which meant the second he got on the lift, the mission would get real loud, real quick, unless he figured out just who was on the bridge. The thermal mode on his VISOR couldn't see that far away, and time was running out. The heads-up display, or HUD, on his VISOR had ticked down to ten minutes. That strict time prevented Shepard from picking his way through ODN conduit service shafts or finding another way to the bridge.

Thankfully, even though the hijackers themselves were a mixed bag, whoever was masterminding this attack was a professional.

Two guards stood at the turbolift doors. Armoured, anonymous like the rest, but their rifles were at the ready, and their posture told Shepard these guys were the real deal. He'd need to take one of them hostage, interrogate them on what the situation on the bridge looked like. Which meant one of these boys was about to take a long nap.

From his vantage point just around the corner, Shepard couldn't determine species, or if they could see him. The one working light between them and Shepard was bright enough that if he stepped out they'd see him instantly, light-diffusing armor or not. Shepard pulled a stun grenade from his pocket and armed it, setting the charge for half-power. Aimed correctly it could knock out one and paralyze the other, aimed improperly and Shepard would be left interrogating a coma patient.

His phase pistol held firmly in his free hand, Shepard tossed the stun grenade around the corner. There was brief shout of surprise as it came into view, and then the firework fiz-pop as the grenade detonated. Shepard followed it, his pistol raised and ready.

One of the guards was busy stumbling over his non-functioning feet, his brain shutting down as the electrical pulses overrode his body functions. The other must have been in situations similar, because he had jumped clear of the blast radius and had his rifle trained on Shepard.

They fired simultaneously, but Shepard's hit found a home as the rifle's beam cut harmlessly through the air, leaving a nasty scorch mark in the opposite wall.

Keeping his momentum, Shepard sprinted forward, slamming his forearm across the guard's helmet. Holstering his pistol as he did so, a swift kick sent the guard's knee bouncing in the wrong direction, and as he fell forward Shepard whirled behind him, holding him by the throat in one arm, with the Fairbairn-Sykes in his other hand, tilted up just under the guard's chin.

The stun shot deadened the man to the pain of his kneecap dislocating, but he was conscious enough to feel the knife's tip poking against his jugular.

"You've got one choice: Hold still."

A grunt was the guard's only response.

"Tell me, what's a nice guy like you doing on a ship like this?"

"Go to hell, Starfleet."

"Good guess, but Starfleet isn't authorized to do the kind of things I'm about to do to you," Shepard gave the knife a nudge, enough to touch the muscles beneath the skin without any damage, "So I'd save your breath, you've only got a few left."

The small gasp of pain was twinged with horror and realization, and Shepard had to stop himself from grinning.

"How many on the bridge?"

"Three."

"Why Earth? What do you gain by destroying it?"

"Freedom. You don't have a chance of stopping us," The guard said through labored breaths, "It's pointless!"

"Then you won't mind if I try anyways?" Shepard asked rhetorically, "One more thing, and then you can go. Who hired you?"

Hesitation. Shepard could either force the subject with another poke of the knife, or back off and hope the mercy would convince him to spill his guts in the hope it would save his own neck.

Shepard didn't have time for the latter.

"Agh!" The guard groaned as the knife slid half an inch to the right.

"Alright! Alright! We were hired to destroy Earth, we were sought after because of... Uh... Look, we were hired to steal the ship and-"

Shepard didn't let him finish, he was stalling for time, time Shepard didn't have.

"Better luck next time."

The next words were silenced as Shepard finished the cut, slicing the man's throat with a deep cut. Letting him fall forward, Shepard cleaned the Fairbairn-Sykes on the back of the guard's pant leg and sheathed it again.

Slicing a man's throat was a grizzly, barbaric way to go, but there was no reason to keep him alive any longer, and one less fanatical terrorist in the galaxy didn't exactly weigh heavily on Shepard's conscience. That was the kind of thing that differentiate men like him from the paranoid psychos in Section 31- he had a conscience, even living in the kind of shadow-filled world he did. Dealing with the worst of men in the worst of circumstances alienated him to most of civilian life, but at least he did his job in defense of everything they held dear, unaware of the realities required to defend those freedoms. The nutjobs in Section 31 just ran off whatever deluded conspiracy fit them that day.

One day Shepard was certain OARS would be able to take them down, but for now they remained two very different intelligence agencies on different sides of the same country. Besides, with terrorists like these, who had the time to handle Section 31?

Shepard opened the turbolift door, primed his last stun grenade, and prepared to finish this mission off.

The turbolift doors opened, and a stun grenade on maximum power tumbled end over end through the air. Shocked gasps and curses followed, along with a firework pop so loud it even rang Shepard's ears.

Peeking his head around, Shepard was pleasantly greeted by three unconscious bodies on the floor. Tilting his VISOR down, Shepard did a quick thermal scan of the room, stepping out of the turbolift only when he was certain there was nobody else in the room. He examined each of the hijackers, dismayed by what he found.

A Bajoran, a half-mechanized human, and some kind of bastardized Romulan, probably a Reman.

No commonalities, no similarities, nothing tying them together. He'd have to leave the interrogations up to Starfleet Intelligence, in the meantime he had a ship to stop. Shepard stepped up to the helmsman's console and prepared to shut down the warp engine.

Instead, Shepard swore and broke out in a sprint back to the turbolift.

"Winters, I need a play by play on the quickest way to the engine room."

Shepard exploded from the turbolift, leaping over the bodies he'd left behind, running hell for leather away from the bridge.

"Copy, Shepard," Winters said, a tinny little voice in his ear, "Take your first right, then continue twenty meters until you reach a four-way junction. Take a left, then the first door on your left should be a service shaft that will drop about ten meters down."

There may still be terrorists left onboard, but that mattered very little at the moment. All that mattered now was reaching engineering, and fast.

"Shepard, this is Traviss," A deeper voice broke in over the subdermal commlink in his ear, "What the hell is going on?"

Shepard opened the hatch on his left, leaping into the shaft, rolling with the fall as he made contact with the ground to both maintain momentum and spare his knees the shock of sudden impact.

"Follow the shaft until you see a circular hatch above your head, open it and then proceed exactly as I say: Left, right, right, left, forward, down."

Winters' cool, tinny little voice sounded a bit panicked. Shepard felt flattered that his mission going to hell in a handbasket was one of the few things to make her show genuine emotion. She was his advance man, constantly in his ear during operations normally, and the one he reported to on kills, knockouts, objectives, or, in times like this, when he needed help.

In addition to being an expert hacker, Winters was a wizard when it came to surveillance and operations handling. She'd come onto the team at Traviss' recommendation, and that was good enough for Shepard. He trusted her with his life, and had done several times.

"The helm console was hard locked," Shepard answered as he barreled down the service shaft, his boots sending endless echoes across the shaft, "Looks like all this muscle was only to make sure nothing went wrong."

"Damn!" Traviss swore, "What's the plan?"

Shepard grunted, twisting the wheel on the hatch until it gave way. Using all his strength, he pulled the hatch down, pulled himself up, and kept running, following Winters' instructions to the letter.

"If I can get to engineering, I have an idea," Shepard said.

"Well, whatever you have in mind, do it fast," Traviss said, "Starfleet caught wind of the hijacking and scrambled an intercept force. As usual, they have no idea you're aboard, Tom. If you can't bring that thing to a stop, they're going to destroy it mid-warp."

"And risk sending all that wreckage across subspace?"

"Better than Earth being destroyed."

Shepard found it hard to fault that logic. The HUD on his VISOR automatically updated as Winters' uploaded the new information. Instead of five minutes until impact, he now had only two until destruction. There was always a way, but sometimes it was hard to imagine it.

"I'll get it done."

Shepard ran straight up to a set of double doors. Inputting an override code provided by Winters, the doors opened agonizingly slowly, sliding with all the grace of a geriatric ballerina, and all the scraping noise of a freight dock. Shepard squeezed through the opening and kept going.

Looking around, Shepard was pleased to find exactly what he needed.

Using his pistol, amped up to the 'Vaporize' setting, Shepard aimed at the warp core and pushed the trigger. The high-pitched orange beam shot across the space, slowly eating away at the protective covering until it was fully melted away, revealing the dilithium crystal housing behind. Alarms all around him began to sound off, in addition to a softer chirp from his VISOR as the timer continued to tick down.

One minute left.

Shepard wrenched open the emergency equipment panel. Taking hold with both hands, he lugged out the coolant barrel and began dragging it over to the warp core. With any luck, he could still shut this thing down, even if the dose of radiation he was about to get would be a doozy.

Radiation. That silent, invisible specter of death that haunted every special operator's nightmares. This level of exposure wasn't recommended for anyone, but chief engineers had stood next to much worse for decades and come out just fine on the other side. So long as he didn't stick his hands or his face in there, he'd live.

Shepard was taking a big gamble nonetheless. He was banking that the hijackers were using substandard dilithium crystals to power the warp core, and if he was right he could end this all in the next few seconds. If he was wrong, well, he took comfort in the knowledge that he wouldn't feel a thing.

With his knife, Shepard stabbed down into the coolant barrel, wiggling it back and forth until he had a sizeable gash in the top. Heaving the barrel into his arms, Shepard took a deep breath.

Ten seconds until Starfleet was estimated to intercept the ship.

Shepard threw the coolant barrel into the core and ran like hell.

For decades, Fort Meade, Maryland, had been home to the United States' National Security Agency, one of the most secretive and advanced intelligence agencies on the planet. Tasked primarily with SIGNET, or signals intelligence, the agency had operated with very little oversight from the government. Regardless of who was in charge of the nation the NSA often beat a tune of its own, all in defense of the nation it was based in.

Since World War III and the formation of the United Earth, the NSA had been integrated into a global intelligence agency. That agency eventually grew into two separate entities: Section 31 and Starfleet Intelligence. Both were untrustworthy at the best of times, and had centuries of experience behind them both that put them on par with the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order. By the 24th century, however, neither existed in the same way.

Section 31 had become a hive of paranoia and was considered a rogue agency. Neither the President of the Federation nor the highest-ranking officers in Starfleet had any control or pull over it. It survived by being a hydra of sorts, one constantly in a state of civil war with itself. Its agents operated on their own biases, their own missions, often coming into conflict with either Starfleet or each other. At one point it was even rumoured that Section 31 was little more than an artificial intelligence gone berserk.

Starfleet Intelligence had evolved to include nearly every intelligence or special operations agency in the Federation core worlds. It was no longer on par with the Tal Shiar, the Obsidian Order, or, at times, the Klingon Empire's Imperial Intelligence. It was a slow, lumbering beast that put its toes in everybody's pies, so to speak. Capable, but glacial, operating with Vulcan patience and human tenacity.

Neither were headquarted in the former territory of Maryland on Earth, neither claimed to have a headquarters either.

The Operations and Regulators Squad, on the other hand, had made itself a nice little home at Fort Meade. Its agents never spoke to each other, never met each other, were never made aware of another agent's existence, they each had their own handlers, and they answered to two people only: Michael Jan Traviss and the Federation President. In the field, they could go, be, and do what Starfleet Intelligence could not.

They were ghosts, unsanctioned by the Federation. If they were caught, there would be no tracing an agent back to OARS, and the Federation would disavow whatever activities they were involved in. They were splinters in the side of anybody who became a target of the Federation.

Nobody but the President of the Federation was even aware they existed, a secret passed from one holder of the office to the next for the past fifteen years. They were perhaps the best safeguards of the Federation and the democracy it held so dear. Men like Tom Shepard were the best of this elite agency, granted a freedom to do whatever it took to protect the Federation, and they took their jobs with unparalleled professionalism and seriousness.

Protect the Federation at all costs.

The coolant barrel worked as intended, dousing the crystals and the core in a substance that sent their temperatures plummeting thousands of degrees in seconds. The substandard crystals fractured and melted under the volume of coolant, and the core quickly shut down as its systems were flooded with viscous, turquoise green liquid. The ship itself exited warp so quickly that much of its structural integrity was compromised, and massive sections of the hull cracked open, depressurizing entire decks in the process.

Shepard, still at a full run, was tossed first into the deck and then a wall that had just before been twenty meters away. Both impacts knocked the wind out of him, and he was certain he'd be feeling bruises welt up within minutes. The worst was yet to come, though.

The coolant Shepard had tossed in was an emergency kind, a mixture so powerful it could never be used in normal operations. The sheer volume of an entire barrel being introduced at once had a cascade effect on a variety of systems connected to the core, to say nothing of the core itself.

A shockwave of energy rebounded out of the warp core's various tubes, exploding panels and ripping up the floorboards as it continued to expand. That wave would continue until it ran out of hull or it ran out of energy, and unfortunately Shepard was far too close for it to run out of energy.

The wave sent panels, half full cargo boxes, and floor paneling at him. Some of it shredded, turning massive pieces into a hailstorm of shrapnel that peppered across his uniform and cut up his exposed skin. The debris that didn't, however, simply slammed into him in an unavoidable cacophony.

Still, better bruised than dead. And, thanks to his actions, Earth lived for another day.

All that remained now was getting off the ship, and some soon to be forgetful Starfleet officers would be very helpful with that.