“Babe, hurry up. We should have left an hour ago,” Commander Aramis Lionel said, waiting in Catersha’s quarters.

“I’m hurrying , sweetie,” she replied from her bathroom. “I woke up late. We should not have been partying that hard last night.”

She stepped out, dressed in civilian clothes, but with a towel wrapped around her hair, drying it.

“Not my fault you like to party as much as Jadzia,” Aramis said as he sat at the table.

Catersha stopped what she was doing and glared at him. Aramis felt her glare and shivered. She grabbed the wet towel on her head and threw it at him, hitting him in the face.

He grabbed the wet towel off his face, his facial reaction to the wet towel cracked Catersha up. She fell to the floor, laughing so hard she was crying. As he helped the towel, he rolled it up and towel whipped Catersha, snapping at her rear end.

“Ouch!”

Catersha jumped up off the floor before he snapped the towel again. She glared at him again, rubbing the spot he snapped the wet towel at. He saw her doing that and grinned at her, dropping the towel.

“Are you ready yet,” he asked her.

She marched to her bedroom and grabbed her bag and marched back to the main room. She shoved her bag into his chest.

“Yes, I am ready. You carry my bag,” she sternly told him.

Before he could object, she stormed out the door and down the corridor. He resigned to carry her bag and his. He slung her bag over his other shoulder, since it was on his right shoulder. He walked after her. She was standing at the turbolift, waiting for it. He walked up next to her. Just as he stopped next to her, the lift doors opened. They both walked in and the doors whooshed closed.

“Transporter Room 2,” Catersha growled at the computer while glancing at Aramis.

The lift started to move.

“Halt,” Aramis said.

He still felt she had a torpedo lock on him. He visibly gulped and turned to face her. Catersha was staring him down.

“Stand down Lieutenant Commander,” he ordered her.

“No uniform…no orders,” she said smugly.

He looked at her for a second, then her face softened. She gave him a warm smile.

“Babe, I’m sorry,” he said apologetically.

She looked at him with her warm smile still on her face. She stepped closer and put her arms around his neck and gazed into his eyes.

“I know, baby. I was just messing with you,” she said softly.

She gave him a soft kiss on his lips then took her bag off his shoulder.

“Computer, resume,” Catersha ordered the computer.

The computer beeped and the lift resumed. It stopped a minute later and the doors whooshed open. Catersha exited first, almost bumping into a Lieutenant. He grumbled something that neither Catersha or Aramis caught. The Lieutenant stepped out of the way for Commander Lionel as he exited. Aramis nodded to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant nodded back and walked into the lift. The doors closed behind him. Catersha was leading Aramis into the transporter room. The transporter Chief greeted them both as they walked in and took their places on the transporter pads. The transporter operator entered a few commands in her console then looked up at the Commander.

“Ready sir,” she asked Aramis.

“Energize,” Aramis ordered.

The transporter operator moved her hand over the console, activating the device. Both Aramis and Catersha started to shimmer in the transport effect and dematerialized and their atoms were scrambled and sent over the long distance to the transporter room on the Starbase. They rematerialized in their proper sequence with no problem.

“Permission to come aboard,” Aramis asked the transporter operator.

“Granted sir. Enjoy your stay.”

Aramis and Catersha exited the transporter room and walked to the main hangar to catch their runabout. They boarded it and headed to Earth and their much needed shore leave for a month.

***

A month later, Commander Aramis Lionel and Lieutenant Commander Catersha were on the beaches of Maui, enjoying the last day of their Shore Leave before having to head back to their ship. They packed up their belongings, including Catersha’s Horga’hn and a few other souvenirs they gathered.

Aramis watched Catersha pack her Horga’hn in her bag and her holocamera. He softly laughed.

“I can’t believe you actually found one here on Earth,” Aramis said softly, finishing his Mai Tai.

Catersha giggled, replying, “yea, I got lucky on that find. I’m glad that we decided to go sightseeing too. Taking a romantic horseback ride through the DeForest National Park was beautiful. Thank you for taking me on that.”

Aramis walked up to his new wife and gave her a romantic kiss.

“Thank you for talking me into taking this Shore Leave,” he softly said to her.

The door to their hotel suite chimed.

“Come,” Aramis said.

The doors slid open and a porter walked in.

“Excuse me sir and ma’am. It is checkout time.”

Both Aramis and Catersha sighed together, not really wanting to leave. Aramis and Catersha both looked at each other.

“All good things…,” they both said to each other.

They gathered their bags and followed the porter to the front desk, where they checked out. They took a walk to the nearby transport hub and caught a shuttle to the Starfleet Academy satellite station where their runabout was parked. As Aramis and Catersha enjoyed the shuttle ride to the base, they talked about their time together and what the future could hold for them. The shuttle landed next to the runabout. Two cadets opened the door and helped Aramis and Catersha out of the shuttle and grabbed their bags and walked to the runabout.

Aramis and Catersha thanked the cadets and got in the runabout and started preflight preparing. Aramis contacted Starfleet Operations for the clearance to take off when the runabout was ready. Starfleet Operations gave the clearance to take off. The runabout lifted off the ground smoothly and Aramis guided it upwards into the atmosphere.

The runabout exited the Earth’s atmosphere and reached orbit. Aramis set a course to leave Earth’s orbit and the solar system. The runabout flew past Spacedock in orbit and passed an incoming Miranda class cruiser. As the runabout flew past Mars, Aramis jumped to Warp 3. The runabout accelerated to several times that of the speed of light, heading back home.

“Well, we are on our way home. ETA is 47 hours. What do you want to do,” Aramis asked his new bride.

Catersha smiled at him mischievously. She stood up and gently took his hand.

“Oh, I can think of one of two things. Follow me.”

***

Twenty hours later, Aramis and Catersha were asleep in the aft cabin when the computer started beeping. Aramis was the first to stir at the constant beeping.

“Computer, report,” Aramis growled as he tried to wake up.

“Interior sensors detected elevated energy readings not normal to ship specifications,” the computer reported.

Aramis’s eyes snapped open. Catersha jumped out of the bed. They both looked at each other.

“Identify energy signature and source,” Catersha ordered the computer as she and Aramis both quickly got dressed into their uniforms.

“Scanning…,” the computer reported. “Energy signature is similar to known Obsidian Order covert explosives. Unknown device detected near main impulse manifold.”

“Damn it! If it blows, it will definitely cripple us, if it doesn’t destroy us. We need to diffuse it now,” Catersha barked.

Aramis ran up to the cockpit and took the controls as Catersha grabbed the emergency tool kit and opened the access hatch. She climbed into the small crawlspace and opened the magnetically sealed hatch that allowed direct access to the impulse manifold.

“Cat, report,” Aramis ordered, concerned in his voice.

“I’m in the crawlspace now and just opened the access hatch to the impulse manifold now. Scanning…,” she reported back. “Found it. It is a small device, no more than two inches square. It is directly attached to the main plasma conduit. If that ruptures, we are dead. I’m going to try to remove it from the fuel line. Get ready to transport this thing, using my comm badge signal.”

“Acknowledged,” Aramis replied.

Catersha grabbed the laser scalpel and carefully detached the device from the fuel line. Next she grabbed another tool to grab it off the fuel line and slowly pulled it out of the compartment.

“Stand by baby, I got it off the fuel line,” Cat said.

She carefully backed up down the crawlspace. The device started beeping louder and faster. Catersha froze and looked at it.

“Damn it! I think I activated it. Get ready to energize.”

Catersha dropped the device and took her comm badge off her uniform and put it on the device.

“Energize!”

The transporter beam started to dematerialize the alien device as Catersha scrambled backwards out of the crawlspace. Two seconds after that transporter process started, there was an explosion. The runabout shuddered very roughly and immediately dropped out of warp speed. The stresses of the forced deceleration caused the starboard nacelle to break off and spin away from the runabout. Half of the consoles in the runabout blew out and an explosion came from the crawlspace that Catersha just exited. The force of the explosion threw Catersha backwards and she hit the wall hard, her right shoulder first. The lights flickered like crazy. Alarms were going off. Catersha regained her senses and noticed smoke and a fire coming from the crawlspace. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed an extinguisher and worked to put the fire out. The fire was coming from a fractured plasma conduit. She was quickly able to extinguish the fire before it ignited the main fuel lines.

“Computer, damage report,” Catersha barked as she stumbled to a working engineering console in the aft compartment.

“Warp engines offline. Main impulse engines offline. Main power offline. Auxiliary power offline. Helm control and navigation offline. Main life support offline. Communications offline.”

Catersha growled, “So what is working?”

“Thrusters are functioning. Emergency power available. Manual overrides available,” the computer reported.

“Switch helm and navigation systems to manual. Reroute auxiliary power through the secondary systems,” Catersha ordered. “Catersha to Aramis, are you ok up there?”

“I’m ok. What the hell happened?!” Aramis barked, as he wiped a stream of blood coming from his forehead.

“The device detonated during transport. I should have realized that is standard for the Obsidian Order,” Catersha said. “The device exploded and took out almost every major system of the ship.” Catersha was going over the system displays. “Oh my God! We lost the starboard nacelle!”

“What do you…,” Aramis started to say, then out of the corner of his eye, he saw the nacelle spinning off into the void.

He cursed every curse word there is in the Klingon language. He feverishly tapped keys on his console, trying to regain control.

“Cat, I need helm control,” he barked.

“I’m working on getting manual overrides online. Stand by.”

Precious minutes pass by as the runabout still slowly spins to its starboard, out of control. Aramis continues to try to regain control and every so often glances out the viewport. The spin rate of the runabout is that it takes the runabout about fifty three seconds to complete a loop. Suddenly, the computer consoles, those that are still working, beeped to life.

“Manual override engaged,” Catersha said as she rejoined Aramis in the cockpit area.

“Just in time,” Aramis said, pointing out the front viewport.

A green and blue colored moon appeared to be approaching fast. Catersha started to scan the moon.

“Damn, we are caught in its gravity well and pulling us closer. We only got minutes before we crash land. Send out a distress signal,” Aramis ordered.

Catersha tapped her console furiously, trying to send a subspace message out.

“I’m trying to send out a distress call, but I’m not sure if it got through. The subspace antenna was damaged,” Catersha said.

“Wonderful. Hang on, we are going in. Jettisoning the antimatter pods,” Aramis said.

As the flying brick dropped through the upper atmosphere of the moon, two small pods rocketed away from the runabout. The outer hull of the runabout glower red hot as it continues to fall out of the sky.

“Hang on right,” Aramis yelled, bracing himself.

The runabout crashed against the jungle ground of the moon like a rock skipping on a pond. The other nacelle got ripped off when the runabout clipped a small rocky outcropping. The broken ship skipped several more times before coming to a rough stop. Both Aramis and Catersha flew forward, due to the high inertia, smashing into the front view screen. The impact knocked both of them unconscious.