Story:Bait and Switch/No, It's Not, Either

Twelve seconds and 1.3 light-hours later we drop back to sublight and race towards Malon II at full impulse. Master Chief Wiggin locates the Shargrash and throws the optical sensor readouts onto the viewscreen. The Gorn freighter has multiple hull breaches and the starboard impulse engine is out, but by skill, luck, or some mixture of both, they’re managing to avoid the worst of the pirates’ fire, even using their cargo tractor beam to chuck small rocks and various bits of debris into their path (not very effectively, but they’re trying). For their part the pirates, a Jem attack ship and three fighters in varying states of repair, are whaling on them with essentially everything they’ve got.

“Comms,” I order, “broadcast in the clear, all channels.”

“Ready, ma’am,” Esplin says nervously.

“Jem’Hadar vessels, this is Captain Kanril Eleya of the Starfleet vessel USS Bajor. You are ordered to release control of your helm. Heave to, and prepare to be boarded.”

The Jems don’t flinch. One of them, probably the biggest and ugliest I’ve ever seen, even briefly appears on the screen and tells us to go away in a supremely disinterested tone. I’m even a little insulted. “Tess, fire at will.”

“Aye. Shields up, locking weapons. Tac hologram online.” A 3D display of the nearest twenty kilometers of the system materializes between the command bench and the viewscreen.

The Bajor drives straight at the Jems and a series of coruscating orange streams of nadion particles lance out at the attack ship. Doesn’t do too much damage but we get their attention. A purple polaron beam impacts against our shield in return to even less effect. My home’s defenses are far stronger than theirs. “Conn, port forty degrees, twenty degree down,” I call. “Attack pattern Picard Lambda.”

Streams of polaron bolts from the fighters hiss into nonexistence against the shields, followed by a slight jolt to the bridge from a torpedo. “Starboard shields at 98 percent and regaining,” Tess reports. “Biri, can you get those fighters out of my face?”

“I’m on it! Tractor beam … locked!” On the tac display one of the fighters to our starboard freezes in place as a focused beam of gravitons closes an inexorable grip upon it. “He’s all yours, Tac!”

“Firing phasers.” Our full broadside of eight Type 10 phasers crashes into the irritant and tears it in half in an eyeblink. “Splash one!” Tess crows.

“Two more behind us, sir,” Wiggin calls, “and that attack ship is—torpedoes incoming! Locked and homing!”

“Tess,” I order, “Forward Two to point defense mode! Reinforce forward shields!”

“Point defense running!” she confirms. “Aft banks locked on contact F2 and firing!” The forward beam easily picks off two of the incoming torpedoes and the third impacts harmlessly on the shields. Meanwhile the aft phasers lance out at fighter number two. One misses but two and three crash straight into its sidewall, which collapses. “Aft launcher locked! Firing!” A single quantum torpedo shrieks out of the aft torpedo tube. Seconds later its proximity fuse detonates, and a multi-megaton burst of plasma and charged particles incinerates the hapless fighter.

“Contacts F1 and JAS1 still active! F1 coming around!” Its symbol on the hologram rockets past us to port and below the saucer, firing as it goes. It lets what’s probably its full complement of torpedoes go much too close for us to intercept and they smash full force into our port sidewall. “Shields holding, 78 percent!”

“Return the favor, Tess. Forward beams.” Six coruscating orange lances from the saucer reach out and touch the fighter. Two direct hits, four glancing caresses. The fighter’s warp core is punctured and it detonates in a blinding flash.

“JAS1 is turning,” Chief Wiggin reports, calmly. “Christ, they’re moving to ram us, aiming for Main Engineering!” I flash on a horror story from before the Dominion War, when this scenario played out over the planet known as “Paradise” in the Gamma Quadrant and cost us the original USS Odyssey.

Not today. Not here. “Tess, drop aft shields and stop engines,” I order.

“What?”

“You heard me. Drop aft shields, stop engines, and put everything on the nav deflector.”

“Oh, I see where you’re going with this,” she says with almost sadistic glee on her face. “Ops, nav deflector to maximum power. Repeat, maximum possible power.”

“Nav deflector powered,” Gaarra’s voice comes through the intercom.

The Jems come streaking in and … let’s say that while combat shields are bad at stopping kinetic impactors, seeing as how nobody on this side of the galaxy uses them, it’s precisely what the nav deflector is designed for. They slam into the barrier at a sharp angle and bounce off, the display showing their starboard nacelle has sheared right off. Their shields are down, their weapons are wrecked, and with only one engine they start to go into a flat spin. “Conn, come about, one-four-seven.” I hail them again as the Bajor yaws to starboard. “Jem’Hadar vessel, you’re defenseless. Surrender now and we’ll beam you off your ship.”

The response is something I’ve been told is extremely rude in the Dominion trade language. Their spin begins to slow as they start firing their remaining thrusters in sequence. I roll my eyes, even though I was pretty much expecting this; Jems rarely surrender. “Tess, do me a favor and put them out of their misery.”

“With pleasure. Firing as she bears.” She hammers her key and the saucer’s ventral phaser array lances out once more and transects the ship’s torpedo magazine. The secondary explosion disintegrates the forward half of the ship and sends the stern careening off down Malon II’s gravity well.

“Damage report?” I say.

“Other than some klutz in astrometrics who fell over and hit his shoulder on a table when that Jem ran into us, no casualties,” Biri reports. “No damage either; shields are coming back to full.”

“Well done, everyone!” I say in a satisfied tone. I hit the intercom. “Secure ship from battle stations and return to previous alert level.” The combat holodisplay disappears and I release the key. “Comms, hail the Shargrash for me.”

“Channel open,” Esplin says, breathing heavily.

I look at her, then back at the viewscreen where Captain S’bek has appeared. I’ll have to talk to her in a bit. “SS Shargrash, you okay over there?”

S’bek nods. “Never in my life did I ever imagine I would be grateful to the Federation Starfleet. I am in your debt, Captain Kanril.”

“Just doing my job. Need any help getting your ship fixed?”

“Thank you for the offer but, surprisingly enough, we’ll be all right. We managed to save the essential systems and we can make it to the Ragesh Mining repair station at Malon IV on one impulse engine. I owe your crew a round of drinks.”

“You’re welcome. Stay out of trouble, okay?”

“I’ll try. Once again, thank you.” He vanishes from the screen. Fifteen kilometers ahead, the Gorn freighter comes about and goes to warp.

“Ensign Esplin, can I speak to you for a moment?”

The Saurian stands and walks over, standing at attention. I can see her lips quivering a bit but she stays more or less expressionless. “At ease,” I tell her. “This your first time in a real fight?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, I’m serious.”

“During the fight, I was scared.”

“And now?”

“Numb, ma’am. How am I supposed to feel? I just killed people.”

“No, you didn’t; I did,” Tess replies from my right, “but that’s not important right now. You’re feeling about what the skipper and me expected. Right, ma’am?”

I nod, stand, and put my hand on Esplin’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. I’m not going to rely on cliché here: the first battle isn’t the hardest, it’s just the first. And frankly, as pathetic as that one was, I guarantee the next will be harder. You do your job and work with your crewmates and you get through. The rest is up to the Prophets.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And if you need to talk to someone,” Biri adds, “Counselor Shree’s office is always open.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Carry on, Ensign.”

She walks back over to her station, but it chimes as she sits down. “Now what?” she wonders aloud. She checks the readout and turns back to me. “Ma’am, Admiral Marconi is on subspace for you.”

I stand and straighten my jacket. “Onscreen.”

Marconi’s in a worse mood than he was when I met him, glaring into the camera, his jaw tight. “Captain, I’m pulling you off your route. You are to proceed to the Dreon System immediately at maximum military power.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I have no earthly idea. DS9 picked up a garbled subspace message thirty seconds ago from the Bajoran colony on Dreon VII. The only word we could make out was ‘help’ and it cut off after ten seconds.” He pauses, then continues. “I’m also dispatching the Jadzia Dax and the Amaterasu but you’ll be there a good fifteen minutes ahead of either of them. Your orders are to render aid as necessary and report in. Find out what’s going on but don’t risk your ship needlessly, understand?”

“I never do, sir.”

“Good, get moving.”

“Conn, set course for the Dreon System.” I hit the intercom key. “Bridge to Engineering, give me everything you can get out of the warp drive.”

“I’m on it, Skipper,” comes the voice of my chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Bynam Ehrob. “I can get you warp 9.98 for forty minutes but I’ll have to take the core offline to cool off after that.”

“Nav, that enough?”

“Barely, Skipper,” Lt. Ivanovich replies. “We’ll reach the planet but we won’t be able to warp back out.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need to. Conn, warp 9.98.”

“Warp 9.98, aye,” JG Park replies. “ETA thirty-eight minutes, twelve seconds.”

“Tess, yellow alert, and take us back to battle stations at T minus three minutes. JG Park, punch it.”

“We’re on our way!” He punches the command into his console and the ship accelerates past lightspeed, gunning for the warp ten barrier.

Author's Notes
Counselor Shree appeared in "Relics", a  Foundry Spotlight mission by Kirkfat.

The Bajor is written with an a eye towards what ten Type X phasers (not counting the one atop the stardrive section, which is unavailable with the saucer docked) would be capable of if a special effects budget was not an issue. Therefore the Bajor is capable of putting out a lot more beam spam than the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) ever displayed. She is also built with technology about 40 years newer than the Enterprise and capable of incredible bursts of speed: The Enterprise could only sustain warp 9.9 for ten minutes, whereas the Bajor can manage 9.98 for forty.