Running Silent

Posted on Tue Aug 4th, 2026 @ 7:18pm by Lieutenant Hlath & Captain Mac Sullivan & Lieutenant Commander Jethro "Jet" Romanowski & Lieutenant Lioren Daeval & Lieutenant JG Jalen Young & Ensign Tyler Faulkner

5,689 words; about a 28 minute read

Mission: Regula Gambit
Location: Main Bridge
Summary:
Timeline: Mission Day 3 at 14:00

[Main Bridge]
[USS Proxima]
[1400 Hours]

Six hours was a long time to sit behind a moon.

Mac hadn't sat, mostly. He'd stood at the back of the bridge with his arms folded, or stood near the viewscreen, or stood at the engineering console for a while talking to Jalen about nothing in particular until he'd run out of things to say. He'd drunk two cups of the terrible coffee. He was considering a third.

The Proxima sat tucked in close against Verex IV-A, nestled in the moon's magnetic shadow where the interference would scatter their sensor profile into background noise. It was, Mac had to admit, a good hiding spot. Kirak had been right about that too. The gas giant's fourth moon was large and geologically restless, its magnetic field irregular and strong, exactly the kind of clutter that made it difficult for anyone in the inner system to get a clean reading. They'd had to adjust position three times already as local traffic shifted, each maneuver careful and slow, thrusters only, nothing that would generate an engine signature.

"Ensign," Mac said from the command chair, "how close did that last freighter come?"

The young woman at the helm, Ensign Priya Nath, fresh out of her second year of deep space rotation and doing a reasonable job of not showing how much this assignment was costing her nerves, checked her readout. "Forty thousand kilometers, sir. She was on a standard approach to Verex III, didn't deviate."

"Good." Mac glanced toward the communications console. "Mr. Dyrgen, anything on the common bands?"

Dyrgen had been listening with the practiced patience of someone trained to filter signal from noise. Three different freighter captains complaining about the docking queue at Verex III. A pleasure-craft pilot exchanging coordinates with what sounded like a paramour at the next station over. A salvage broker arguing about kemocite manifests. The usual texture of a busy inner system.

He adjusted his earpiece and turned slightly toward the command chair. "Nothing remarkable, Captain. Routine commercial traffic, the bands are about what one would expect for a system of this size. No emergency frequencies, no encrypted bursts that I can pick out of the background. If anyone is hunting us, they are not advertising it."

He shifted his attention to the science station. Hlath had been running passive scans since they'd arrived, building a picture of the inner system's traffic patterns without broadcasting so much as a whisper. "What's your read on the approach lanes, Lieutenant? Any change in the last hour?"

"Some activity, but nothing remarkable. A pair of freighters, one hauling kemocite, the other part of a registered salvage enterprise. Both appear legitimate, according to Federation registries. A smaller ship did pass through on a course that attracted my attention, but it appears to be a pleasure-craft, too well made and too small to be the vessel we seek. No doubt its intentions in this part of space are insalubrious, but any involvement in events that are our focus would be, I expect, coincidental." Hlath explained.

Mac nodded slowly, eyes still on the viewscreen. "Keep watching. If anything changes in those approach lanes I want to know about it."

Lio perched on the arm of the command chair with an ease that could only be Betazoid. His dark eyes moved steadily across the bridge, observing every motion and every exchange with quiet attentiveness. It was part of the job, after all. A counselor learned quickly that people revealed themselves most clearly when they believed no one was truly watching.

Still, observation did little to dull the creeping boredom of the moment.

Waiting. Holding position. Patience.

None of these had ever been virtues Betazoids were particularly celebrated for. Their culture prized engagement, conversation, the dynamic flow of thought and emotion between people. Sitting still while the universe took its time unfolding had never come naturally.

Lio shifted slightly where he sat, one leg dangling loosely beside the command chair, his gaze drifting briefly to the forward viewscreen before sweeping the bridge again. If something interesting didn’t happen soon, he suspected he might start inventing reasons to get involved.

Mac completed another slow circuit of the bridge and came to a stop beside the command chair.

Lioren was sitting on the arm of it. Dark curls, sharp jaw, long legs, and the particular ease of someone who had decided that if he was going to be bored he was at least going to be comfortable about it. He had the unfair quality of looking elegant while doing absolutely nothing.

Mac considered the scene for a moment. "You know," he said, "most people just stand." He let that sit, arms folding loosely across his chest, expression arranged into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Anything I can get you?"

Lio stretched languidly, easing back in his position as if the thought alone had taken some effort. “I’d love a Risan Cabernet,” he said, the words touched with a hint of indulgent longing, “but I’m on duty.” He tipped his head slightly toward the Captain, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of his mouth, equal parts charm and restraint.

At the navigation console, Tyler had found something extremely interesting to look at on his readouts.

Whatever Lio's answer was, it didn't get far. A proximity alert chirped from the science station, low and steady. Mac's attention shifted without ceremony. "Lieutenant Hlath, what have we got?"

"Detecting one.. no, two vessels on an approach vector, Captain. They appear to be smaller craft, but with unusually high reactor output. While I defer to my more tactically-experienced colleagues on any assessment, I would assume they were some sort of patrol interdictor or fast-attack craft." Hlath explained as he tapped a few console keys, focusing on his display and the trajectory of the craft.

"Mr. Dyrgen, check the common bands. I want to know if there's any chatter."

Tyler studied the sensor returns on his console, what little their passive scans could resolve at this range. He glanced back toward the command chair. "I'd agree with Lieutenant Hlath, Captain. Those reactor signatures are consistent with short-range patrol craft. Fast, probably well-armed for their size, but they won't have the fuel reserves or stores for extended operations. A day or two out from port at most before they'd need to head back."

Mac nodded slowly. He'd commanded a ship like that once. The Hyacinth had been small, quick, and carried more firepower than anyone expected, but she'd always been on a leash. You could only stray so far from your base before the math stopped working in your favor. Ships like that were built to hit hard and get home. Not to linger.

"If they're on a standard patrol route and haven't picked us up, the moon should keep doing its job," Mac said, though he didn't sound entirely convinced by his own assessment. Too many assumptions stacked on top of each other for comfort. He sat forward in the command chair. "All the same. Yellow alert, but keep it quiet. No defense fields, no phasers, no shields. I don't want to light us up on anyone's scanner."

The alert panels shifted from their standard lighting to a steady amber glow across the bridge. No klaxon. Just the color change, and the subtle shift in posture that followed it through every station.

"Mr. Faulkner, load photon torpedoes. Keep the targeting scanners dark." Mac turned his attention to the engineering station. "And inform Mister Romanowski's people to stand ready on shields and phasers. I want them available at a moment's notice, not a moment longer."

"Aye, sir." Tyler's hands were already moving, initiating the torpedo loading sequence while keeping the active targeting systems firmly offline. The weapon bays hummed faintly as the automated loaders engaged, but nothing about the process would betray them beyond the hull.

Mac settled back, leaning against the still occupied chair, and let the bridge find its rhythm again. After a moment, he glanced toward Lio. "For what it's worth, Counselor, if this turns into something, I'm going to wish I'd let you have that cabernet."

Lioren felt the captain’s warmth before he fully registered the closeness of it, a subtle shift that caught him off guard. It wasn’t unwelcome, just unexpected.

For a fleeting moment, he considered pulling away, retreating back into the distance he thought the captain typically kept. But he didn’t. He remained where he was, still and quietly aware, allowing the warmth to linger rather than breaking it.

Dyrgen's fingers were already moving across his console before the captain had finished speaking. He had developed, over the years, a particular feel for what an active threat sounded like on a comm band, and he had been listening for it since the proximity alert chirped. He swept through the standard frequencies, then the secondary, then the emergency channels.

"Nothing on the bands, Captain. They're holding to comm silence." Dyrgen frowned at his display, adjusting one of the gain settings. "However. I am picking up the suggestion of tight-beam transmissions from both vessels. Low power, narrow profile, the sort of thing one would not normally notice without already looking. The peculiar part is that they do not appear to be directed at one another."

He looked up, letting the implication hang in the air without spelling it out. If the patrol craft were not talking to each other, then they were talking to someone else. "I cannot pin down the recipients without bringing our own arrays to bear, and that would compromise our position."

"The patrol ships have reached the apogee of Verex IV. They're holding there and maintaining an accelerated geostationary orbit. Away from us for now, but if they continue they'll eventually be back around into sight of us." Hlath explained once the route was certain. "If they know we're here, they're doing a very good job of pretending otherwise. Or they've got time to kill." He posited.

The next twenty minutes passed like the slow grind of a millstone.

The patrol craft completed their first pass, swung around the dark side of Verex IV, and came back into sensor range exactly where they had been before. Mac had moved the Proxima twice in that window, easing her along the moon's terminator on thrusters alone, keeping the bulk of Verex IV-A between them and the patrols. It was careful work, the kind of slow-motion chess that wore on the nerves precisely because nothing was happening yet.

Mac did another circuit of the bridge, hands clasped loosely behind his back, and came to rest near the command chair again. Lio was still lounging in it, looking like he had decided to make a study of the entire shift from that exact spot.

Sullivan cleared his throat. "Counselor. At this rate I'm going to have to put you on the duty roster as bridge furniture." The captain said it without looking down, his eyes still on the science readouts above Hlath's station. "Anything to report from your particular vantage point? Any of my people about to come unglued?"

Lio chuckled slyly.

He didn't get long to wait for the answer.

"Captain," There was alert in Hlath's voice, not his usual detached observation, "Both craft are breaking orbit as we speak. Their current bearing will bring them into orbit of moon IV-A."

Mac's stomach did something unpleasant when he heard it. The captain kept his face still.

"Could be coincidence," Sullivan said, more for the bridge than for himself. "Could be a routine sweep of the moon. But I'm done assuming." The captain turned toward the alert panel beside the command chair and tapped it once. "Red alert. Hold phasers and shields offline. We're not lighting up first."

The amber glow shifted to a deep, pulsing red, the bridge lighting dimming into something closer to dusk. No klaxon. Mac had ordered the audio suppressed at yellow and saw no reason to change that now.

"Mr. Dyrgen." The captain turned toward communications. "I need you to risk a tight-beam burst to the Tereshkova. Lowest power that has any chance of reaching them, full encryption, one transmission. Tell Commander Kirak we have two patrol craft breaking from Verex IV and heading our direction. We may be compromised. He should adjust his timeline accordingly." A small pause. "If you can't get a clean signal through, leave the message with the shuttle's computer. I want it waiting for them the moment they're back aboard."

Dyrgen worked the encryption protocols with the speed of someone who had spent the better part of fifteen years practicing for exactly this kind of moment. He composed the captain's message, compressed it, layered it with three nested ciphers, and prepared a tight-beam burst calibrated to the lowest possible power that might still cross the distance. Then he tried to raise the Tereshkova directly.

Nothing.

He tried a second time on a different frequency, then a third. The shuttle was not answering. The away team's communicators were either out of range, or shielded, or off, and he had no way to determine which from this distance.

"Captain, I cannot raise the away team or the Tereshkova directly. Either they are in a position that's blocking line of sight, or the shuttle has been put into low-power standby while it sits idle." Dyrgen worked the console again, his jaw set in the careful way it did when he was solving a problem under pressure. "I am attempting a workaround. If I aim a tight burst at the shuttle's comm array itself, I can leave the message in its receive buffer. The shuttle's computer will surface it the next time anyone interfaces with it. It is not a clean transmission, and I cannot confirm without breaking silence again, but I think I managed to slip it through."

The Lieutenant turned slightly toward the command chair. "I hope, sir."

Sullivan turned to the navigation console next. "Mr. Faulkner," the captain said, "the instant you detect them powering shields or charging weapons, you raise ours, you arm our phasers, and you don't wait for me to tell you. Standing order."

Tyler's hands hovered over his console, the navigator's eyes locked on the readouts. "Aye, Capt..."

Tyler didn't finish the word.

"Captain, they're powering weapons! Raising shields, arming phasers..."

The Proxima's deflectors snapped on with a ripple that flickered visibly across the forward viewer, and that was when the first hit came.

The deck punched up under Mac's boots. The captain grabbed the back of the command chair to keep his feet, instinct alone. A second impact followed half a heartbeat later, harder, and somewhere ahead of him a console blew. Sparks fountained from the helm. Ensign Nath was lifted bodily out of her seat and thrown across the bridge deck, landing hard against the railing near the communications station and crumpling there, not moving.

"Medic to the bridge!" Sullivan was already crossing the deck. "Counselor, get to her. Do what you can until medical arrives."

Lio was on his feet almost immediately, reacting before the moment had fully settled around them. He crossed swiftly to the secured med kit, pulling it open with practiced efficiency as he searched through its contents. Within seconds, he retrieved the medical tricorder and returned to Ensign Nath’s side.

Dropping into a crouch beside her, he passed the scanner carefully over her body. The tricorder emitted a series of soft chirps and tones as it identified the areas of injury, its display lighting with diagnostic data .Lio’s expression tightened with focus, but his movements remained calm and controlled. He reached back into the kit, producing a hypospray. “This should help with the pain,” he said quietly, more reassurance than explanation, before pressing the injector gently against her skin and administering a dose of Terakine.

Only then did he glance back to the tricorder readings, reassessing her condition with renewed concentration. “The medic should be here soon.” He said reassuringly.

The captain didn't wait. Mac swung into the helm position, brushed aside the smoking edge of the panel, and let his fingers find the controls he had not personally flown in months. The Proxima groaned around him, the magnetic shadow of Verex IV-A no longer a hiding place but an obstacle. Sullivan fed power to the impulse engines and rolled her hard to port, breaking out from behind the moon into clear space.

"Mr. Young." The captain didn't take his eyes off the helm board. "Get on the line to Mister Romanowski. I want warp speed standby, immediately. If this turns the wrong way we are not going to have time to ask twice."

Jalen was already moving, fingers across the engineering console as the young officer opened a direct line below decks. "Engineering, bridge. Mister Romanowski, the Captain wants warp standby ready to go now. We may need to break the system in a hurry." Jalen paused, listening, then glanced toward the helm. "Standing by, sir."

"Wait one," Jet replied into the comm before surveying his status board in Main Engineering. The deflectors had been absorbing the impacts, but the inertial dampners were struggling. Being her first firefight, Jet was pleased with how the ship had been responding. "Put a stabilizer on the number 3 injector," he called out to his staff before returning to the comm, "Warp speed ready at your command bridge."

A third impact shuddered through the ship. The shields held, but the deck plates rang with it.

"Mr. Faulkner, return fire," Sullivan ordered, eyes still on the helm board. "Target their weapons systems. I want them blind, not dead, but I'll take what I can get."

"Aye, sir." Tyler's voice had lost the edge of charm and found something flatter, more focused. The navigator's hands moved across the tactical board with the economy of someone who had stopped performing. The forward phaser banks flared on the viewscreen, twin lances of orange light reaching out into the dark. The first volley caught the lead patrol craft on its starboard quarter, raking across its forward shields. "First impact, glancing. Shields are holding on their end. Recalculating for a torpedo spread on my next pass."

"Lieutenant Hlath," the captain called over his shoulder, "scan those patrol craft. I want to know what's holding them together. Power couplings, shield harmonics, anything we can use to put them down faster."

"Aye, Captain. Commencing intensified scans." Hlath said, gripping the frame of his terminal intently as he relayed orders to the rest of the science department across the ship to begin pointing every scope, lens and array towards the vessels, and to reallocate any processing power to those tasks.

The Proxima rolled again under Mac's hands, big and heavy compared to anything he'd flown lately, but she answered.

"Scans suggest their reactor outputs are balanced through a series of automatic shut-offs as individual systems operate. Close-up imaging of their hull shows injector ports for class-IV neutronic fuel. The trade-off for the advantages of this class of neutronic fuels is that they deplete rapidly if overtaxed. If we can time our phaser attacks so that we impact their shields at the same time they fire their weapons, I believe their power consumption will increase by an order of magnitude. At those levels, they will be unable to engage us for long." Hlath suggested once the team had a chance to give their input. It wasn't a knock-out punch, but it might bring things to a quicker conclusion. If he was right.

Sullivan was about to relay Hlath's suggestion to Tyler when the bridge changed.

There was no warning. No sensor blip, no proximity alert, just a sudden ripple of distortion on the aft viewer like heat off a desert, and then a third ship was there. Sleek, predatory, materializing out of nothing fifteen hundred meters off the Proxima's stern with its main battery already discharging.

The hit walked across the ship like a hammer down a length of pipe.

The deck heaved hard enough to throw Mac against the helm console, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. The forward viewscreen flickered, went dark for a heartbeat, came back. Half the overhead lighting failed entirely, the rest sputtering into emergency amber. Somewhere on the upper bridge a panel blew with a sharp electrical bark, and the air filled with the smell of burned insulation.

Tyler was already moving. The navigator had been moving, in some part of his brain, since the moment the rear sensors registered the distortion. His hands hit the aft tactical board and slammed the torpedo firing sequence with the heel of his palm.

"Aft torpedoes away, full spread!" Tyler called out.

Two photon torpedoes leapt from the Proxima's stern launchers and crossed the gap before the new arrival had finished pulling its cloak down. Its shields were still forming when the torpedoes hit. The first detonated against the leading edge of its primary hull. The second punched through the half-formed deflectors entirely and bit into something vital. The aft viewer lit up with the bloom of secondary explosions tearing across the unknown ship's flank.

A breath later, the aft tubes thudded again. The torpedo crews below had wrestled a third round into the launchers faster than they had any right to, and Tyler caught the green light and sent it. The third torpedo screamed across the diminishing gap and struck the wounded ship dead amidships. For a moment the aft viewer was nothing but white. When the glare faded, there was nothing left of the cloaked vessel but an expanding cloud of debris and superheated gas, fanning outward in a slow, lazy bloom against the black.

"Third torpedo away. Target destroyed, Captain." Tyler's voice was steady, but the navigator was breathing harder than he had been a minute ago. "Pass our compliments to the torpedo bay. That was a hell of a reload."

At the engineering console, Jalen was already working through the cascade of damage reports flooding his board. The young officer's expression had gone tight. "We've lost the aft power coupling, sir," Jalen said. "Main power is down to fifty percent. Backup systems compensating, but we are not going to take another hit like that."

Mac pushed himself off the helm console and back into the chair, ignoring the protest from his shoulder. The captain tapped the comm panel. "Bridge to engineering. Mister Romanowski, I need a report."

What came back was not Jet's voice. It was three voices, overlapping, fragments of damage control teams trying to talk over each other on what was supposed to be a dedicated command channel.

"Mr. Dyrgen, clear that damn channel!" Sullivan called out without turning. "I want Romanowski, not a chorus."

Dyrgen's hands were already moving across his console, isolating the engineering command line and pushing the cross-talk down into the secondary buffer where it belonged. The Lieutenant glanced over his shoulder. "Mister Romanowski on the line, sir. Apologies, the damage control teams were stepping on the priority channel."

"Mister Romanowski," Mac said into the comm, while feeding power to the impulse engines and pulling the Proxima hard around Verex IV-A, "what does my ship look like from where you're standing? I need to know what's broken and what isn't."

Before Jet had a moment to answer, there was a sharp crack as a deuterium pip burst and began flooding the immediate compartment with smoke as it vaporized hitting the air. "RESPIRATORS," Jet shouted as he instinctively reached for his own respirator along the bluged. After afixing it to his face, and mashing the button on his suit to initiate the self seals, he surveyed the damage. "Close Isolation valves 4 and 7 and start venting the compartment Mr. Jefferson. Ensign T'lar, get the wounded out of here to sickbay," Jet ordered, his voice projecting through the respirator's internal speaker. He then turned back to his status board and activated the comm. "The aft power coupling is gone, Its going to take us a few hours to reroute all primary circuits through the secondary systems. We just had rupture in the primary deuterium loop, but we should be able to run the core off the secondary feed systems until we can bypass it. We've got blown EPS relays throughout the ship. Deflector output is down to 40%. I can bring it up to about 70% if we isolate all non-essential compartments and reroute their primary power to the deflector grid, but thats about the best i can do."

The Proxima curved around the moon's edge, and for a few precious seconds the bulk of Verex IV-A came between the Proxima and the two surviving hostile ships. It was not cover. It was a line-of-sight problem for the attackers, and that was all the captain needed. A few seconds to think. A few seconds to breathe.

"Lieutenant Hlath," Sullivan called toward the science station, "give me a status on the two patrol craft. We hit the lead one before we got jumped, and I want to know if our friend Mr. Faulkner did any meaningful damage, and what the other one is showing us right now."

"Lead vessel shows moderate damage to outer hull, one of their particle beam weapons is disabled, but no other impact to vital systems our sensors can detect. They do seem however to be approaching critical power reserves. Secondary vessel appears unharmed, but shields are restoring slowly, I expect they are also attempting to conserve limited power supplies." Hlath made the best estimation he could with the available data.

Sullivan stayed at the helm. The Proxima was still bucking under him, the moon's shadow giving him only the briefest illusion of cover. Somewhere ahead of his curving arc, the system opened up again, and so did the field of fire.

The turbolift hissed open at the back of the bridge. Two medical technicians in mustard fatigues came through at a run, anti-grav stretcher between them, making straight for Ensign Nath's still form near the communications station. The lead tech, a tall human woman, dropped to a knee beside the counselor without preamble.

"We've got her, Counselor. What've you got for me?"

“Ensign Nath was thrown from her station,” the counselor reported, his tone calm and professional despite the urgency of the situation. For a moment, Lioren felt as though he had been transported back to the Academy, standing in an Emergency Response Training scenario and reciting a casualty assessment from memory. “She has moderate burns to her face and hands, along with what appear to be several broken ribs.”

He glanced briefly toward Nath before continuing. “No apparent external bleeding. No indications of organ rupture or other internal trauma based on my initial scan.” His posture remained composed, though there was an unmistakable concern beneath the clinical delivery. “I administered Terakine to help manage her pain while we waited for medical personnel to arrive.”

With the report complete, Lio stepped slightly aside, allowing the medical team unobstructed access to their patient while remaining available should they need additional information.

"Do it, Mister Romanowski," Mac said into the comm. "Strip the compartments and get me that seventy percent. Anybody who complains about sitting in the dark can take it up with our friends outside." A beat. "Fine work down there, Jet. Keep her together a little longer. And one more thing before you go: with that loop bypassed, talk to me about warp. If I have to call for it in a hurry, what have I actually got?"

"Already working sir," Jet said having anticipated the captain's approval and issuing the relevant commands to his engineering crews with his console. He ran a quick simulation on the main status board to see with the damage control measures how much power he would have available. "If we run off the secondary systems, maximum warp I can give you would be 3.5. It should take us about an hour to bypass the primary deuterium loop. After that, i can give warp 5. I know its not much, but we will have to sacrifice speed to keep our deflector grid stable. Once we are out of combat I'll be able to give you a more thorough assessment of the warp drive," he said into the comm panel.

At the helm, Mac ran the arithmetic and didn't love it, but he'd sailed on worse. Warp three and a half was no kind of sprint. It didn't have to be. The interdictors out there were built on a leash, and anything burning neutronic fuel at that rate wasn't following anybody out of the system. Distance was a weapon too; the trick was living long enough to draw it.

"Understood, Mister Romanowski. Start the bypass now, and don't wait for calm seas to do it. I would rather have warp five an hour before I need it than a minute after. Bridge out."

At the engineering console, Jalen was already sectioning the ship on his board, non-essential compartments going amber one by one as their power bled into the deflector grid. "Deflectors coming up, sir. Fifty-five. Sixty. Holding at sixty-eight and climbing slow."

"Mr. Faulkner," the captain said, eyes still on the helm, "science has found the seam. Their fuel burns an order of magnitude faster when they fire while taking hits on their shields. So we invite them to do both. Time your volleys to land while they're shooting. Lead ship first. Mister Hlath tells me she's nearly out of pocket money."

"Aye, sir. Landing punches while they swing." Tyler's hands were already building the firing solution, the navigator's grin flickering back for a moment before the focus took it again. "They want to conserve power. Let's make saving it impossible."

"And Lieutenant Hlath." Sullivan spared a glance for the science station. "Good hunting on that seam. Now get half your scopes off those two and sweep the rest of this system. That cloaked ship did not announce itself, and I would take it as a personal favor if the next surprise did. Anything moving out there, anything at all, I want it before it wants us."

Mac's eyes found the counselor next, and something dry passed through them despite everything. "Counselor. You spent half the shift making yourself at home in my chair. Go strap into it. This is about to get bumpy."

Lio nodded and moved swiftly, making his way to the centre seat. Sliding into the chair, he secured himself without hesitation, ready for whatever came next.

Mac fed power back to the impulse engines and let the moon's edge slide off the viewer. The Proxima came around Verex IV-A's limb nose-first into the open, heavier on the stick than anything he'd flown in years, and steadier than anything had a right to be on half power. Two contacts resolved ahead, right where Hlath said they would be.

"Let's be about it," the captain said quietly, to the ship as much as the bridge, and put her into the fight.

"Captain," Hlath cautioned once again, "Sensors are detecting atmospheric distortions consistent with passage of a starship away from the surface. We do not however detect any starship. I believe another cloaked vessel may be headed towards us. Possibly more than one."

Mac heard Hlath out without turning his head. More cloaked hulls on the way up, and the two ships in front of him already spoken for. The fight was winnable. The system wasn't. And the away team was on the wrong side of all of it: out of reach, off the air, with one unread message sitting in a shuttle buffer.

He didn't like the next order. He gave it anyway.

"Mr. Dyrgen, one more burst to the Tereshkova's buffer, same trick as before. Tell Commander Kirak: driven off, not gone. Go to ground, stay off the air, watch for us." A beat. "Mr. Faulkner, the lead ship, as planned. Then we're leaving."

Tyler's timed volley landed exactly where the science department had promised, phasers meeting the lead interdictor's shields at the instant her own weapons discharged, and the seam did the rest. Her grid gave out all at once: running lights, weapons, engines, all of it dimming to a maintenance glow, a warship turned into the most expensive buoy in the Verex system. The second craft broke high and away without firing again, throttled down to a miser's burn, saving what fuel she had left.

The parting shot came in from the new contacts at extreme range, one flat blow across the stern shields that rang the hull and shaved the hard-won deflectors back to fifty. Nothing followed it. The stars stretched, snapped, and streamed, and the Verex system fell astern with its patrols, its wrecks, and five of Mac's people still on the ground in it.

The turbolift delivered a relief helmsman a few minutes later, a young petty officer from the second watch who took one look at the scorched edge of the helm console and had the good manners not to comment. Mac surrendered the station to her, straightened, and discovered his shoulder had been waiting for exactly that moment to file its report.

"Mr. Faulkner, plot us a course back toward Federation-controlled space. Helm, best speed." The captain crossed the bridge, tapped the alert panel beside the command chair, and the red pulse faded back to honest working light. "Stand down from red alert. Mr. Young, the ship is yours to mend: get repair parties moving, priority to the power grid and the stern shield emitters. Sickbay to report on Ensign Nath when there's something worth reporting."

Lio was still strapped into the command chair. Mac came to a stop beside it, one hand on the backrest, and looked at the streaming stars rather than at the counselor.

"Don't worry," the captain said, easily. "We'll still make the rendezvous."

The arithmetic behind his eyes said it would be tight, said it in the cold specific way it had been saying things all day, and he kept every trace of it off his face. Which was, Mac reflected, a perfectly stupid thing to attempt while standing eighteen inches from a Betazoid.

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