Lieutenant al-Kwaritzmi’s personal log, supplemental: the battle against the Klingon fleet is raging. The Redding is taking substantial damage, but my forward repair team has been managing any acute problem in sections 12 to 24. Sublieutenant Dhae’s help until now has been useful. We have caught sight, just a couple of minutes ago, of a Klingon boarding party. Our priority is, right now, to release EPS pressure at X23-17.

The manifold where the pressure was building up had already caused some considerable damage: it had already released plasma several times, breaking containment and piercing the corridor wall. Iskander could see several burnt patches where the plasma had jetted out, but his expert engineering eye could quickly estimate that the damage was mostly esthetic until now. Of course, the pressure was building up, and if left unattended it would probably result in a considerable hole in the hull.

Apparently there had been a wounded, and surprisingly it was a Klingon: a young female warrior lied unconscious on the floor, looking a bit burnt, her uniform partially melted, her weapons spread around, and next to her was kneeling Nurse Anmol Ghoshal.

“Lieutenant” said Anmol Ghoshal when he saw Iskander and Dhae. He was using a medical device, probably a subcutaneous tissue regenerator, on the chest of the Klingon warrior. “You here for the exploding plasma thing in the wall?”

Iskander was for a moment taken aback. The nurse and his patient were not far from the hole in the wall nor from the signs of plasma burns: it was quite reckless to stay there where, at any moment, the manifold could spout out more deadly matter.

“Do you have to heal the Klingon here, Nurse?” asked Iskander while, automatically, taking out his tricorder and starting a scan on the EPS system.

“I dragged her as far away as I could from the exploding manifold that got her” said the Nurse, “but she wouldn’t have survived long without immediate intervention. Also I knew that someone from engineering would be here soon.”

Iskander was getting his readings. The plasma pressure was high, and the manifold would release again within a couple of minutes — that time a volume large enough to clear out a couple of rooms. “Knew or hoped?”

The ship shook quite intensely.

“You are here, Lieutenant” remarked the nurse. “I knew it.”

Dhae seemed sceptical at the nurse’s basic activity. “Do you have to heal the Klingon warrior while we are fighting them?”

The nurse shrugged, putting the subcutaneous regenerator into his medikit and taking something else out. “They are our allies just as much as the Romulan Republic, aren’t they? Even though they are momentarily boarding us. Also, I am but a simple man: I see a wound, I cure a wound.”

Dhae seemed still unconvinced. “I wished I was as simple a man as you.”

Anmol Ghoshal smiled. “Don’t you all.”

The Romulan knelt next to the lying figure of the Klingon. Iskander couldn’t see what he was doing, but now was the time to do some engineering. He opened the EPS panel: the malfunctioning machinery came into view and a good amount of heat hit Iskander’s face. Several pieces of metal within the EPS panel were starting to glow, implying very intense temperatures.

“Dhae — Sublieutenant, I need your help. I’m going to reroute plasma to the manifold X23-16 to prevent any release. While I’m doing that manually, you will take a decoupler and unfasten those three magnetic bolts.”

Dhae stood, walked next to the human, took the decoupler and looked where Iskander was pointing.

There was an art in rerouting plasma through the EPS grid, and Iskander wasn’t a practitioner of that specific art: he was a teleporter expert. But he knew he had done a good enough job. Dhae undid the bolts, slowly.

This was a critical part. Without the bolts, had Iskander not kept manually causing the plasma to flow out, the plasma would have leaked out quite freely. “Take the plasma extrusion accelerator and set it to one nanometer and a half. Put its tip in that orange hole and activate it until its monitor goes blue.”

Dhae looked into the engineering kit. “The extrusion accelerator is the one that looks like a chirtenma’s leg and paw?”

Iskander had read many tales about the chirtenma, a native animal of Dhae’s native planet, but had never thought of looking up a picture of what it looked like. Its leg and paw, moreover, were twice a mystery. “It’s the one that looks like a cochlea.”

“Ah, yes.”

Dhae did the operation correctly and Iskander relaxed.

“I now need to substitute the quadrupole generator and the crisis will be over” he announced. “This section of the ship is staying in one piece.”

The ship shook again.

“Do you think that we’re winning or losing?” asked Nurse Ghoshal.

“I can express no doubt in the force of the Republican Navy” said Dhae.

The ship shook again and the lights flickered.

“The Redding wasn’t done for combat, was it?” asked the Romulan.

“No” said simultaneously Iskander and Anmol Ghoshal.

Iskander had now concluded the substitution of the quadrupole generator. The manifold was saved: he took the extruder, restored the normal operational conditions, and every reading was normal.

“We are done” he announced. “Another engineering job saving the ship and winning the battle!”

Anmol Ghoshal was just then injecting something in the Klingon’s neck with a hypospray, but the ship shook very violently and everyone was thrown on the floor.

That seemed to wake up the Klingon warrior. She started groaning and moving, and she opened her eyes.

“What! What!” she screamed.

“You could have healed her a little less well, nurse!” said Dhae, getting up.

“That hypospray was supposed to let her sleep for hours” grumbled Anmol Ghoshal, trying to get up.

“Starfleet fools!” screamed the Klingon, quickly getting a hang on the situation. “Your pity on me is my weapon!”

Iskander cursed under his breath while standing. He really had wanted to chat with Dhae.

The Klingon warrior took her disruptor out and pointed it on Dhae. “And there is even a dishonourable Romulan here! Oh, this is perfect! Where are the other warriors, weakling?”

Dhae seemed unphased by the disruptor pointed on him and smoother his uniform. “They walked through here five minutes ago. They probably left you behind when you unwisely jumped into burning plasma and got toasted, didn’t they?”

The warrior bared her teeth, her disruptor twitching. Anmol Ghoshal had healed her up quite well, but she didn’t seem to have retrieved all of her synapses. “Do not taunt me, Romulan! We will not do the dishonour of killing Federation officers, for they are our allies and they joined the Romulan Republic’s side because of their pitiable sense of honour, but you are free to be killed.”

Dhae picked up the engineering kit. “With that disruptor? Haven’t you already noticed that its power cells have been removed and it can’t fire?”

Anmol Ghoshal was picking up his medikit. “Yeah, that was the second thing I did after dragging you out of range of the exploding manifold.”

The Klingon warrior tried firing and nothing happened. She screamed and threw the disruptor rifle on the ground. “Dishonourable targhs! But you didn’t think that I’d have a second disruptor!”

She took out a disruptor pistol, small and deadly, and pointed it at Dhae.

Dhae for a moment looked almost bored. “Nurse Ghoshal forgot to take the power cells out from that one. However, I did.”

She tried firing and again nothing happened. She howled in frustration. “You dishonour me to no end by frustrating my bloodlust! I am Kash’Raq, daughter of Tormoq, of the very minor house of Pirqmiq, of the planet Klashnaq, and I will not be disrespected! I will disembowel someone!”

Iskander was getting quite bored by this whole scene. He just knew that somewhere else there’d be another repair in urgent need of an engineer, and they were wasting out time chatting with this Klingon.

“Die of my blade!” She, still intent on restoring her honour or something, brought her hand to her belt and took out menacingly something that looked like an empty hypodoses dispensary of Federation make. She stared at it with disbelief. “WHO REPLACED MY DAQTAGH WITH THIS USELESS DEVICE?”

“It is not useless, it is merely empty” remarked Anmol Ghoshal, and had to duck when the enraged Klingon warrior lobbed the hypodoses dispensary at his head with a scream.

“DIE BY THE BARE HANDS OF A WARRIOR!” screamed the Klingon, and advanced in the direction of Dhae.

Now, in order to get to Dhae, she would have had to pass by where Iskander was standing. Iskander had regained his position next to the EPS manifold, its hatch still open, and had positioned his hand next to the emergency valve.

A functioning plasma manifold had always a plasma release valve that could, in an emergency, just be opened. The hot plasma would normally be evacuated in a specific evacuation port, but Iskander had quickly unset the quadrupole magnet that bent the plasma jet. As it currently was, it would release plasma in the atmosphere of the corridor, which was — of course — insanely dangerous for anyone walking into it.

As Kash’Raq arrived at Iskander’s position, running towards Dhae, the engineer opened the valve and doused her in a very modest amount of hydrogen plasma.

“AAAAAHH!” she screamed, and almost immediately fell on the floor, passed out on the pain.

For a moment nobody spoke: Dhae, who had been assuming a martial arts position; Iskander, who had shut the valve; and Anmol Ghoshal, looking distraught at the Klingon with plasma burns on the floor.

“I could have taken her in combat” protested Dhae, relaxing his martial arts position. “Possibly.”

“Again?” said nurse Ghoshal in disbelief. “I had just healed her and you just… sprayed her with hot plasma?”

Iskander sighed. He was getting very tired. He refastened the pipe and closed the EPS manifold hatch. “This time give her the tranquillizer before you finish healing her, nurse.”

Nurse Ghoshal sighed and opened the medikit. “Maybe I’ll also restrain her.”

Without a word, Iskander and Dhae left.