Rissikan’s hands were sweaty as he manipulated the controls of the waverider runabout, Icarus, deftly around the trailing edge of Daedalus’ starboard hull. As he slowed the small craft to a standstill, a disquieting scene filled the cockpit’s forward portal. The normally smooth hull of the nimble vessel bore a terrible wound, the blackened char of an explosive impact marking its otherwise pristine grey hull. Rissikan could see directly through the hull to the endless starscape beneath, a hole straight through the small vessel’s slender body.

A cruel wound to be sure, though thankfully not a mortal one.

“We’re in position, ready for materialisation,” he called over his shoulder up the small steps to the cabin where the broad blue form of Chief Petty Officer Ole sat at the Icarus’ ops console. “You can start replicating the panels.”

The crewman offered a nod before opening a comm link with his gigantic blue fingers.

“Tulil, we are ready? Are the replicators prepared?”

“I believe we have managed to adapt the replicator system’s targeting matrix to utilise Daedalus’ dry store,” Khal replied, the deep bass notes of the Romulan officer’s voice buzzing from within the shuttle’s small cargo bay. “Though I cannot promise they will be perfectly to spec.”

“They just need to keep the air in.” Rissikan interrupted from his controls. In the corner of his eye, he could see flashes of light flicker through the dark windows of Daedalus’ primary hull, tell-tale signs that the crew were continuing their damage assessment on foot. With the main power still down, the broken internal sensor reports required manual confirmations, and that meant sending crewmen out into the airless corridors of the damaged sections. Through a nearby window, another flash of torches swept across the small cabin before leaving it to darkness once again as the team moved on. Progress was slow going, and with the ship’s warp core offline, precious reserve energy had to be tightly controlled, so replicating emergency hull panels was down to the less advanced systems of Icarus.

A silence hovered over the comm link.

“Tulil?” Rissikan probed.

“They will do that.”

“You don’t sound very confident, mate.”

“Icarus’ replicator systems were not designed for this scale of production, there are… risks.”

“Sima seemed to think it was doable.”

“I am not Sima.”

Daedalus’ resident engineering genius had thought up the novel plan of using the runabout’s replicators to produce the panels from the ship’s dry store materials. Replicators were simply transporters at their root, disassembling and reassembling matter as directed. In her signature flat tone, she had suggested the runabout’s systems simply be instructed to draw their construction materials from somewhere else. Everyone had agreed the plan was solid, but in practice, it required some skilled rewriting of the command code and a fair understanding of the molecular science involved. Unfortunately, the genius chief engineer was still elbow deep beneath the silent warp core, working to bring main power online. Thus, actioning the less-than-simple plan had been delegated. Tulil might be slightly out of his depth, but needs must, and the Romulan officer had several scientific qualifications on his bunk wall that he rarely made use of.

“No, you aren’t as good on the dance floor. But I believe in you regardless.” Rissikan smiled despite the lack of visual link.

Another short silence floated through the airwaves as the Romulan crewman returned an unseen smile in the privacy of the cargo deck.

“We are ready.”

Rissikan took a deep breath, the cool air of the cockpit slowing his heartbeat. There were lots of variables to the mission, not least the expert hand that would be needed to manipulate the panels into place from afar so the repair teams could seal the breach from within.

The Bajoran pilot wiped his sweaty palms across his chest, leaving dark patches of dampness, before he placed them back on the runabout’s control interface. Expert or not, it was his hands at the console.

Satisfied that circumstances were the best they could be, he threw a nod over his shoulder towards Ole before fixing his attention on the large breach where the durasteel panels would soon flutter into existence.

“Icarus to Daedalus, we are beginning replication, have the repair teams standing by.”

Rhoska fought to itch his thigh through the thick fabric of the environmental suit, the multiple protective layers turning his burrowing fingers into thick, useless sausages.

“They always warn you about not being able to itch your nose, no one ever mentions you can’t scratch anything else properly.” He sighed in frustration, the front of his visor clouding momentarily with his hot breath.

“Please don’t say that; it’ll make my nose itchy,” Talmira replied from the other side of the large hole in the deck where she waited patiently for the shuttle team to materialise the panels.

“And I’ve got a lot of nose to itch.” The Tellerite officer twitched her wide, flat nose demonstratively, the dark wrinkles of her skin deepening as it wriggled back and forth.

Lieutenant Rhoska let out a frustrated snort of air as he abandoned his attempts to reach the itch on his leg.

“I remember this time on Hallup XII-” the man began before the young woman cut him off with a wave of her gloved hand.

“- I’m going to stop you there.” Talmira interrupted. “Is this story true?”

“All my stories are true!”

“All of them?”

Rhoska’s eyes narrowed at the accusation in feigned offense.

“Mostly all of them,” he admitted with a wry grin before continuing undeterred.”Hallup XII was this little colony near Tholian space…”

Talmira breathed a sigh of relief as a chirp of the comm link interrupted the man’s dubious story.

“Standby repair team beta, Icarus is beginning materialisation.” Even across the comm link Bale’s voice sounded weary; the young operations chief was working hard under trying circumstances, and it was starting to show.

Rhoska leant over the edge of the endless precipice, turning his head left and right to look beyond the large holes in the hull above and below them. The rough edges of blast damage looked painfully serrated and jagged where the metallic skin had splintered and cracked from the explosion. Rhoska imagined the maimed Daedalus quietly keening in pain in the silent darkness of deep space.

Less than a hundred meters away, the slender form of the Icarus runabout hung in the sky, the familiar outline of Lieutenant Rissikan visible at the controls. Beyond the grey shape, the dark green form of the Klingon cruiser Ho’Nang floated in morbid stillness, its neck snapped viciously at the centre. There were no signs of activity across its hull, no indication of crewmen at work to save their home, no sign that anything had survived the vicious surprise assault. Instead, it floated in silence, an ominously floating wreck, a stomach-turning vision of dark possibilities.

Pushing a shiver down his spine, Rhoska offered the runabout a large white thumbs-up before taking a step back from the edge and resuming his patient waiting.

Second later, the familiar white fireflies signaled the matter-bending capabilities of the replicators as the starlight was blocked out and four grey panels sprang into existence inches above on the surface of the hull. A barely audible thrum of a tractor beam filled the space as the panels floated downwards and, with a resonating thud, they made contact with the outer hull. A great metallic plaster laying itself across the wound, blocking out the starlight beyond.

“Beta Go.” A voice commanded across the comms.

Rhoska gave a small push from the deck, the deactivated gravity plating offering no resistance as he slowly sailed upward from the floor towards the panel that had been pressed on the dorsal side. Lifting the small phaser welder from his belt, he began the slow task of following the jagged wound edge with its shrill beam, an ugly weld of metal trailing along behind him as he joined the parts at a molecular level.

“Icarus, the ventral plate is lifting. I need you to hold it steady against the hull,” Talmira announced across the comm link.

Rhoska paused, turning his helmeted head for a better view of his colleague, who appeared to be on her hands and knees, crawling on the newly temporary floor. Beneath her, the panel edged away into space, allowing specks of starlight to creep in through the widening gap.

“You know on Hallup XII-” he began.

“Shut up!” she hissed, waving her white suited arm blindly towards him. “Rissikan!”

Moments later, the panel slowed and then returned, creeping back as the thrumming of the tractor beam swelled.

“Much better Icarus, hold it there.” Tallira lifted the phaser welder and pressed its controls, causing a familiar orange beam to leap forward and weld the two parts together.

Seconds turned to minutes, but eventually, the omnipresent hiss of phaser welders and the drone of tractor beam fell away, leaving only the heavy breathing of the pair over the commlink as they surveyed their work. Talmira’s weld was accurate and clean, a slender silver trail that danced across the edge of the join, whilst Rhoska’s thick janky attempts appeared more painful than the original wound.

“Talmira to bridge. The breach has been secured, we’re moving to environmental controls.”

“Good work Talmira. Keep us updated.” An audible sigh punctuated Bale’s sign-off.

“Emergency environmental controls are just down by the turbo-lift,” Talmira announced over the comm as she took several quick bounds down the corridor, her short legs shuffling at a desperate speed.

“What’s the rush?” Rhoska joked.

“I’ve needed to itch my nose for about 10 minutes,” she replied with a laugh, a bubbling light in the darkness.