The conspiratorial mutterings of Sima and Sehgali were barely audible to Mellasitox over the trilling and thrumming of engineers at their work as she picked her way through the debris to cross main Engineering. Bathed in the dark shadow of the still silent warp core, the pair looked like bandits plotting, their foreheads tilted towards one another as they whispered quick missives under their breath.

With several easy steps of her long legs, Captain Mellasitox ascended the small stairway to the upper section and sidled over to the pair.

“Don’t tell me the cops are onto you?” She offered with a small smile despite the continued pain in her chest.

Sima raised a sharply contoured eyebrow in confusion.

“Shouldn’t you still be in sickbay?” Sehgali accused, her motherly tone swelling as she prepared to take the captain by the arm, but Mellastox waved her hands to fend off the escort.

“Woah! Doctor Malax confirmed I was free to go, he’s set the ribs.” The muscles across her chest twinged as a sharp pain danced across them in betrayal. Her statement wasn’t a lie, though possibly an obfuscation. The good doctor had become distracted by a wounded officer moments after he had finished his work, mostly finished.

“Then why are you wincing when you walk?” Sehgali’s eyes had narrowed into laser beams, drilling through the captain’s weak facade.

“Because he didn’t get round to the pain meds,” she admitted sheepishly.

The XO rubbed her brow in frustration, but Mellasitox held her hands up in surrender before her right hand woman could part her lips to chastise her.

“I promise I’ll find some painkillers soon.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I do not doubt it, but in the meantime…” Mellasitox’s voice trailed off as she nodded up to the tall cylinder normally pulsing with blue light that currently stood dark and ominously silent.

“We are facing some difficulties,” Sima admitted through gritted teeth. “We are having some trouble re-initiating the matter-antimatter reaction.”

“Too damaged?” The captain asked, trailing her slender, manicured fingers over the red metallic handrail that circled the sleeping warp core. Seeing the nimble ship’s heart inactive sent a fresh pang of pain across her chest.

“We’ve had to replace several of the dueterium injectors and part of the dilithium matrix, but all the components test as functional,” Sehgali confirmed.

“Then the problem is?”

“I am unsure.” The bulging vein in Sima’s neck throbbed at the confession.

“The reaction simply won’t start, let alone sustain,” Sehgali whispered as she cast an eye across the room, monitoring for possible eavesdroppers. At the damaged consoles, several engineers continued their quiet work but showed no sign of hearing the worrying news.

“That explains the whispering.” Mellasitox turned from the dark warp core back to the pair of women. “Some sort of interference then? Something left over from the explosion?”

“We had a similar thought.” Sima offered an open tricorder, its form chiruping in high-pitched tones as waveforms danced across the screen. Smooth curves flowed back and forth across the axis until suddenly, a burst of twisting energy caused them to leap about the screen frantically in amplitude and frequency. Mellasitox poked the screen with a thin fingertip, causing the readings to slow to a crawl as she rewound the feed. Once again, the crawling waveform lazily bounced up and down until, with a sputter, it twisted painfully as a sudden burst of foreign energy interrupted its smooth pathway.

“With internal sensors offline, we had Rissikan run a sweep over the hull from Icarus.” Sehgali leant over and summoned a different set of scan data. This one was similar to the first, several waveforms dancing across the screen in rainbow colours, denoting different energy signatures. Each seemed repetitive and normal. Then suddenly, a lightning strike of energy sent the wave forms reeling, shattering the peace as the reading leapt off screen, flailing wildly.

“That’s the ship hull?” Mellasitox gasped in shock.

Sehgali shook her head tightly.

“No. It’s local space,” she whispered fearfully.

“Some sort of subspace interference that’s poisoning the core just as it starts reacting.” Sima clenched her knuckles in frustration.

“Source?”

“Unknown, but Rissikan noted his long-range sensors were completely scrambled. The subspace interference field extends as far as we can see.” Sehgali offered a weak smile as she attempted to defuse the tension. “Or as far as we can’t see, I suppose.”

“But the Shuttle’s core is still functional?” Mellasitox raised a confused brow.

“We had Icarus in standby mode at the time of the explosion. Its micro-core was live but running on minimum power and supplied by Daedalus’s fuel reserves.” Sima looked the warp core up and down, her face bubbling with sadness at her wounded child. “When the ship’s core went down, it switched to its own supplies.”

“It looks like we got lucky. Because it was already running, it stayed running.” Sehgali finished, taking the tricorder from the captain’s hands and closing it to silence the bird-like chirping.

A heavy quiet fell on the trio as the painful reality of the situation set in. Whilst the disruptive interference continued, Daedalus could not start its warp core and by extension most of its major systems.

Mellasitox let out a weary snort of air. “Thank you, Sima. Carry on as best you can.”

The engineer nodded and slipped away into the shadows of Engineering as Mellasitox tilted her head at Sehgali, indicating a nearby doorway that led to the engineer’s lounge.

Sehgali had barely slid the unpowered doors closed behind the pair before Mellasitox let out a string of frustrated expletives in several languages in the quiet of the lounge.

“Feel better for that?” the XO smiled.

“Barely,” Mellasitox confessed. “What options do we have?”

Sehgali allowed her weary body to fall onto the long sofa set against the stubby windows, her face barely illuminated by the starlight that crept into the room.

“Not many. Without main power, we can’t get anything up and running. Sima has a plan to try and re-patch the impulse fusion generators, but that won’t be enough to generate a warp field. Not that it would matter.”

“The subspace interference?”

Sehgali nodded slowly.

“On a hunch, I had Rissikan test his subspace components. Sensor array, subspace comms, warp drive- it’s all suffering from the interference.” The XO’s usually positive persona had fallen away into the umbral shadows of the small lounge. Even her optimism seemed defeated.

“The Klingons?” Mellasitox inquired, a glimmer of hope appearing in her eyes as she allowed herself to fall onto the couch with a soft thud, her eyes looking out beyond their injured ship. In the distance, the green form of the Klingon warship was barely discernable against the inky black of space.

Sehgali’s looked grim, her high cheekbones cut to diamond sharp edges by the shadows.

“It looks like they suffered a massive hull breach along the neck. We suspect they experienced an explosive decompression of all decks.” The XO’s face turned even darker. “We can’t see any signs of survivors.”

“Then sending Icarus is the only available option.”

“Captain?” Sehgali’s face was furrowed in confusion. “Sending them where?”

“There’s a Klingon relay station orbiting the ninth planet in the system. It tracked our entrance to the system and might still be functioning.”

“That’s a long shot.”

“I am open to other options.”

Sehgali’s silence was a defeated answer.

“How long will it take Icarus to get to planet?” Mellasitox felt a fire grumbling in her belly, she refused to resign themselves to slowly dying, adrift and helpless before all options were exhausted.

“4 days at full impulse, maybe 3 if they can get a boost round the gas giant en route.” Sehgali’s eyelids fell partly shut as she began pulling astrometrics information from the corners of her memory.

“And our supplies?”

“A few weeks, longer if we can get a boost from the fusion generators. We can pilfer the emergency batteries from the escape pods as well.” The fire had spread to Sehgali’s belly too, a small flame of infectiously warm hope.

“Have Rissikan dock and resupply, muster Theta Squad. They set out as soon as they’re packed.” Mellasitox lifted herself from the sofa with a wince, the pain in her chest still present but dimmed by having an option on the table. “I’ll work with Sima on the fusion generators.”

“I can do that, You need to get back to Sickbay.”

“Sickbay will be no use if we can’t get the generators online. Besides, I have another task for you.”

Sehgali offered a quizzical look.

“I need you to work out how to get us alongside.” Mellasitox motioned to the shadowy green hull of the Ho’Nang in the distance.

“We’re going to have to go grave robbing.”