Chapter 12
Hornet-Class Fighter
Romulus System
“Captain, you may want to look at this.”
Ba'el glanced up from his control board, irritated at the interruption. His anger was forgotten moments later when he saw Starbase 2 vanish in a vast explosion of white fire. The sight struck him like a punch to the gut, took his breath away. He had thought he had put all of this behind him – the death and destruction, the fear and the fury. Now, here he was again, watching who knew how many hundreds extinguished in a moment.
"All those people," he heard one of the pilot's whisper over the intercom, echoing his own thoughts. We can’t mourn those people now. He forced himself to push his own feelings aside, infusing his next words with cold, calculated fury.
"Stay focused, airman."
"But they killed all those people..."
"And they're going to kill a hell of a lot more unless we take out that Battlecruiser, you got me?"
He waited for the chorus of 'Aye sirs’ to echo over the comm before he looked back down at his controls. The warp core pre-initialisation sequence was complete. Slowly, he brought the core online, playing with the flow matrix until he had a steady pulse. Then, taking a deep breath, he activated the core, creating a static warp bubble around the ship.
He quietly thanked his former chief engineer. You see, Kane, I did learn something. He began to play with the bubble, realigning the flow regulators some more and reshaping it into a wedge-like shape that extended out in front of his ship. The bubble held for about ten seconds in this new configuration before collapsing. Ten seconds. More than enough time. As long as nothing goes wrong.
He keyed the intership comm line. Time to do this. "Alright Starbursts, form up."
Following his instructions, the three pilots used their guidance thrusters to move their Hornets into a triangle pattern in front of him, one above and two below. Moments later, their shields began to expand, invisible until they met in a sparking, spitting confluence of energy. All three fields merged just in front of Ba'el's fighter.
"Captain, our shields are being severely weakened by this expansion. I don't know how protected we'll be going in there."
A hell of a lot more than I will be, Ba'el thought. For this to work, he was going to have to go in completely shieldless, or the protective energy barrier would interfere with the warp bubble.
Before he could say anything, though, another of the pilots gasped.
"Oh my God, look at that."
Ba'el twisted his head around and saw both Martok-class cruisers pursuing the Redemption through the construction yard. The beautiful ship had already taken a hell of a pounding, her hull pitted and scoured by the Klingons’ phaser banks. Even without sensors, Ba'el could tell that the ship - his ship - wasn't going to hold out much longer. Still, she was giving as good as she got. The pilot twisted the ship past a dock, so close she must have scratched the paint work. The ship’s rear phasers struck a direct hit on the nearest cruiser’s forward shields. He forced himself to turn away.
"Alright, enough chit-chat, people. Looks like we're out of time. Set course 293 mark 42 and engage impulse drives at full on my mark. Stay on target until I give the word, then break as fast as you can. And be ready to blow that son of a bitch to the Seven Hells when her shields come down."
Once the three pilots had confirmed their orders, Ba’el checked his own systems one last time. Once he was sure he was ready, he allowed his hand to hover over the impulse drive controls. He gazed out the window at the Battlecruiser, her weapon’s array blazing. Here goes nothing.
“Engage,” he ordered, his hand activating the impulse drive a few seconds later.
All four ships surged forward at almost the same moment, managing to maintain a steady distance one from the other. Ba’el checked his systems again - at full impulse, they would reach the leading edge of the Battlecruiser’s shields in about 95 seconds. With the cruiser’s full phaser banks firing at them, though, those 95 seconds were going to seem like hours.
After a few seconds of calm and quiet, phased energy splashed across green shielding with rare fury. The shields sparked and expanded, but they seemed to be holding. For now. Ba’el glanced at the chrono. 75 seconds left.
“Stay on target,” he ordered as one of the fighters was hit by a more powerful blast and almost fell out of formation. The man quickly compensated, his fighter coming back into line with the others. 60 seconds.
“My shields are weakening,” Starbust 12 yelled over the comm. Ba’el realized that he didn’t know any of their names. They were risking their lives for him and he hadn’t even asked them their names. 50 seconds.
“I’ve got buckling in my impulse drive,” Starburst 11 shouted in turn. Ba’el glanced at his sensor readings and saw that the drive was having trouble compensating for the incoming barrage.
“Maintain your course and speed,” Ba’el snapped. 45 seconds.
A torpedo struck the shield, then another, the impact rocking the three fighters back. Somehow they stayed in formation. Ba’el swerved, sending his own fighter through a loop in space to avoid them, before dropping back into formation behind. All three fighters were wavering and Ba’el could see Starburst 12’s impulse engines begin to spark. 30 seconds.
“I can’t hold it,” Starburst 12 screamed. “I’m going to lose it.”
“Stay your course, airman. You hear me? Stay your course!”
“But my drive is going to blow!”
“If you drop out of formation, I’ll shoot you myself,” he snapped. 15 seconds.
“My shields are failing. I’m out of power.”
“Power down your life support and shunt the power to shields,” Ba’el ordered. “Your mask will keep you breathing for the next few minutes.”
Before she could follow his advice, one of the phaser blasts tore through her weakened shields. Her fighter exploded in a maelstrom of metal and fire. Bael swerved out of the way, taking refuge behind the two remaining fighters.
He glanced at the chrono. 5 seconds. 4. 3. 2. “Pull out, pull out, pull out!”
Both remaining ships disengaged, scrambling away from impact with the shield. Ba’el didn’t have time to check whether they got away. He waited until the last possible moment, then brought his warp core online. With a scream of highly charged particles, the static warp bubble appeared around his fighter. The tip of the wedge intersected perfectly with the very edge of the Battlecruiser’s shield. Acting as a bridge through subspace, the bubble split through the shield and carried Ba’el and his fighter through to the other side.
Bridge
USS Redemption
Between Romulus and Remus
With both Martok-class cruisers in hot pursuit, Redemption raced towards the angry red globe of Remus, leading the enemy ships away from the construction yards again. Every hit sent shudders through the invisible deck plating, every burst from the phaser banks bringing the shields that much closer to total collapse. A few of the smaller localized generators had been destroyed already, leaving the armoured hull plating to take the brunt of the attacks, but even that was peeling away or burning off, leaving nothing but bulkheads between the crew of the Restoration-class vessel and the cold harsh death of vacuum.
“Commander, we can’t take much more of this!” Dax called from Ops as L’wynd returned fire. Kalara gritted her teeth, gripping the railing and trying to stay on her feet.
One Martok-class cruiser might have been a decent match for the ship. Two… She needed to even the odds. Her father had served aboard a Martok-class cruiser during the last days of the Resistance. He had died on one. What had he told her about them? She had to think of something before these p’tagh blew her ship and her crew out from under her feet.
“Can we lose them in the atmosphere?”
“Negative sir. I doubt we’d be able to hold out until we reach the planet, and even if we did, they could follow us down.”
Kalara growled. She had known that. What was the matter with her? She had been in battles before. What was so different about this one?
Even as she asked herself the question, she realized what the answer was. The difference was Damien. He was down there somewhere, locked in their quarters by the red alert order, feeling every impact and hearing every explosion, waiting for her to save them all. She was worried about protecting him and it was affecting her ability to make decisions.
What would my father have done? What would Kovoth do? She wracked her brains, trying to dredge up the slightest hint, the tiniest story, that would give her an edge. Then, with a flash of insight, she had it.
Not even bothering to run around the railing, she simply vaulted over the top, landing in the middle of the Pit. L’wynd looked up at her in surprise, but she ignored the tactical officer, racing over to Dax instead.
“We’re about twenty seconds away from losing aft shields completely, Captain,” the Crystat shouted after her. “Forward shields are…”
“Not now,” Kalara snapped over her shoulder. She dropped into a crouch beside Dax. “Lieutenant, I need you to prepare a subspace pulse, modulated to this exact frequency,” she typed the numbers into the ops station, “and targeted at these coordinates.”
When Dax saw the place Kalara was pointing, he looked as if he was going to object, but one glance at Kalara’s face convinced him to simply obey the order. She stood over his shoulder as he prepared the pulse, realigning the subspace emitter and rerouting power through the relays. Once it was done, he looked back at her and nodded. Kalara turned to Williams at the helm.
“Lieutenant Williams, bring us around to face the nearest cruiser.”
The words had barely left her mouth before the ship had already begun spinning on its axis, only the artificial gravity keeping them all from being hurled through the nearest bulkhead. The ‘cruiser filled the screen, already unleashing another holocaust of phased energy at the now oncoming Redemption.
The bridge erupted in fire and smoke. Flames clawed at work stations and half the holographic emitters failed, revealing the blackened plating of the bridge’s walls. One of the security officers was thrown over the railing – Kalara glimpsed Doctor Molak rushing down the steps, tricorder in hand. She turned back to the forward view and snarled.
“Fire the pulse.”
The Klingon cruisers bore down on them, weapons blazing. Kalara knew that this was their only chance. She clenched her hand into a fist, her fingernails biting into her flesh. A red electric pulse leapt from beneath the saucer section, striking at the exact coordinates she had indicated, just below the nearest cruiser’s bridge.
“Sir,” L’wynd exclaimed, obviously astonished. “Their shields. They’re down.”
Thank you Father. Kalara smiled. “Fire at will.”
As Williams tried to evade the other ship’s fire, L’wynd fired everything they had. Phaser banks cast lances of red fury, torpedo launchers hurled power that defied quantum physics, all aimed at the oncoming ship. Every shot counted and every shot drilled into the Klingon ship. She spun out of control, dropping out of the pursuit, dead in the water.
“That”s one down,” Dax shouted out. He paused, a strange look on his face, then he shook his head. “We did it, Captain.”
Kalara allowed herself a tight smile, deciding not to correct him for her rank. “One being the operative word, Lieutenant. There’s another one to go.”
As if in response, the other ‘cruiser, K’mpak’s cruiser, fired a volley of torpedoes that caught the Redemption as she attempted to spin out of the way. The ship seemed as if she was going to shake apart. This is far from over, she thought. She looked down at Dax.
“Lieutenant. Prepare another subspace pulse.”
Looking back up at the ship, she hoped that the trick would work just as well a second time.
Hornet-Class Starfighter
Dominion Battlecruiser
Romulus Orbit
Ba'el flew so close to the Battlecruiser's ventral hull that he could almost see through her viewports.
He kept a tight hold on the controls - a single deviation up or down would send him crashing into the shield or the hull. Neither option seemed particularly inviting. At least not before he had finished what he had started.
He jinked to the left to avoid one of the phaser cannons, increasing his aft shield strength just in case it managed to get off a lucky shot. One thing he had learned during the Occupation was that a Dominion Battlecruiser's short range sensors were pitiful. If one of the Klingons wanted to pick him off, they were going to have to do it by line of sight. As soon as he was out of range, he shunted the power back to the forward shields in anticipation of the next cannon.
Swinging up and around the side of the 'cruiser, he caught a glimpse of his target - the shield generators surrounding the ship's engineering section. He juked to the left, then dove down even closer to the hull, raking the hull plates with phaser fire. With a quick twist of the controls, he brought the nose up until he could see the mushroom like generators. Squeezing the trigger, he launched one, two, three torpedoes at the generators, twisting away at the last second to avoid a pot-shot from a nearby cannon.
His controls lit up green. He pulled the fighter's nose around again to see both generators reduced to nothing more than smoking ruins. Gripping the controls, Ba'el sent his fighter spinning through a hail of debris, allowing his sensors to guide him up and out of the breach in the shields. Stars whirled in the cockpit viewer. He had done it!
As he went to toggle on the intership comm, he felt something hit him from behind, throwing him forward in his restraints. Electricity raced across his console and the smell of ozone filled the cabin. He looked down at his readouts. He'd lost everything but propulsion and basic helm control. No weapons, no shields. One more lucky shot and he was dead.
"That's it," he shouted, finally turning the comm system on. "Fire."
Nothing happened. He glanced out at the view, then down at his sensors. Nothing. All three of the fighters were gone. They had all been destroyed. The hole was there, but there was no one to take advantage of it.
No one but me. He realised what he had to do. Strangely, he felt at peace with the idea. Flipping over, he brought the nose of the fighter back towards the 'cruiser. If he struck the engineering section at full impulse, he should burst straight through the hull. The explosion would take out the core.
Before he could engage the drive, though, a volley of torpedoes flashed by his cockpit. He glanced back at his sensor screen and saw a single fighter coming in hot.
"Thought you might need some help, Joker," Commander Turner's voice came over the com system. Ba'el did not think he had ever heard a more welcome sound.
“Thanks.”
The torpedoes burst through the hole in the shields, piercing the hull and exploding in a vast plume of fire. As Ba’el had hoped, the explosion of the core caused a chain reaction. Fire erupted all over the ship’s hull, plumes reaching out into space like solar flares. The ship was tearing herself apart from the inside.
Ba’el did not wait to see the result. He turned his fighter around, engaging the impulse drive to carry him away from the dying ship as quickly as possible. In his rear sensor feed, he saw Turner fall in behind him. She hailed him.
“What now?”
Ba’el searched the stars for Redemption. He saw her, speeding away from the blackened hull of a Klingon cruiser. She got one, he thought proudly. The other ‘cruiser was in pursuit. Turning his fighter towards them, he shunted as much power as he could from the dead systems towards the impulse drive. “Now, we save my ship.”