USS Culver City dropped out of warp on the outskirts of the Vekrun system, the California-class starship heading in-system at full impulse.  On her bridge, Lieutenant Commander Varyn K’lev leaned forward in his command chair, eyes locked on the viewscreen.  “Where is it?” he asked, his tone clipped.

“The shuttle’s moving through the system’s asteroid belt,” Lieutenant (jg) Tyrisa sh’Livo answered from Tactical.

K’lev nodded; that asteroid belt ran between the third and fourth planets in the system, so it would’ve been easier – albeit more dangerous – to drop out of warp deeper in, but they had a job to do, and that job needed them to be operational instead of crashed against an asteroid.  “Keep us on them,” he said to Lieutenant (jg) Ari Phillips at the helm, before addressing sh’Livo once more.  “Does it look like they’re reacting to us?”

She shook her head.  “No; or at least, if she is reacting it’s not visibly on sensors.”

Lieutenant Ophelia Lotharys looked on from the Sciences station, concern on her features.  Culver City had been sent with the solemn task to hunt down and destroy this shuttle after one of its cohorts had downed the Blythe, pursuant to General Order 13; the orders made sense – though she wished that perhaps there was another way to carry them out – but she also knew that her commander was also pretty upset with the situation and thus could be susceptible to overreaction.  Concern gnawed away at the corners of his mind, until over the next few minutes it began to form into an idea.

During that time, Culver City had begun her final approach to the asteroid belt; she had the shuttle on short-range sensors at this point, her fire held only by the fact that the shuttle which was the focus of her ire was obscured by a larger asteroid at present and K’lev wanted clear lines of fire.  He would have those lines, too, in the next minute or so.  Lotharys cleared her throat.  “I know we’re ordered to destroy the shuttle, but what if there’s another way?”

“We’ve got a job to do, and the crew of the Blythe deserve justice for what happened to them,” K’lev replied without turning.

“They do.  But this isn’t the shuttle that got them,” she rebutted, somewhat surprising even herself.  Lotharys then walked around her console to join K’lev at his chair, resting a hand gently on his arm and turning him to face her.  “All this one’s done is possess a similar weapon.  So what if we capture it instead?  We could try to jam its sensors somehow, then dart up behind it and grab it in a tractor beam from behind, disable its engines, then get it to surrender.  Nobody has to die.”

Precious seconds ticked by.  In K’lev’s mind, the desire to avenge the downing of the Blythe warred with the fact that Lotharys’s words made sense.  By Captain Tyler’s own words, the shuttle that had brought down the Blythe had already been destroyed by the Slivin, so what good would destroying this one serve, beyond a fleeting moment of satisfaction?  K’lev knew Lotharys was right, even if his wounded pride wanted vengeance; he closed his eyes, taking several deep breaths to calm himself before he opened his eyes, looking back up at her and nodding.  “Good idea; thanks, Lia,” he said softly, squeezing her hand with his free one.

He turned to face forward once more as Lotharys returned to her station.  “Ari, bring us up behind them; let’s stay out of their line of fire.  And be ready to back the engines when I say so.  Tiza, stand by on the forward tractor beam emitters.  Tyrisa, keep your fingers on the phasers, we’ll need to disable their engines once we have them.”

The three set to their orders, though sh’Livo still looked confused.  Culver City bore down on her quarry, ready to either capture or destroy it; in truth, K’lev himself was still of two minds on the matter.  Soon, though, it was time to decide; Culver City was in position, and needed to either make her move or open fire.  All eyes on the bridge shifted to their commanding officer, and in that moment time around K’lev seemed to slow.

There are moments in the careers of all Starfleet personnel where they must make decisions that will define them.  These moments may not look the same from person to person, but that doesn’t make the decisions made in them any less fateful.  For the young lieutenant commander in command of the Culver City, this was one such moment.  Certainly, his orders allowed him to destroy the shuttle before him with impunity, and despite Lotharys’s words and the preparations he’d ordered there was still a part of him that wanted to just start shooting.  However, another part of him also couldn’t shake the immutable fact that – as Lotharys had pointed out – this shuttle hadn’t actually done anything to deserve destruction, and neither had its crew.

Destroying the shuttle would certainly be the easiest option and the one with the least risk to Culver City, and pursuant to General Order 13 it would be considered a fair attack under the law, but once the haze of anger and vulnerability faded K’lev would have to find a way to live with the fact that he’d ordered – he checked his chair’s armrest console – four innocent Ferengi slain, and destroyed four families with but a word and the press of a few controls.  If he chose to try and capture the shuttle and it was able to get a shot off, it could disable Culver City and send her crashing into an asteroid or some such, possibly costing the lives of everyone aboard, but the four Ferengi would survive; hollow succor to the families of Culver City’s nearly-300-strong crew, who would then all be receiving the message dreaded by the families of all who served in Starfleet.  If he was able to disable and capture the shuttle, that would be the best possible outcome, but it then begged the question of what should be done with the Ferengi on the shuttle, and nobody aboard Culver City could say how deep this truly went within the Consortium.

All of these thoughts flew through K’lev’s head in the space of a few heartbeats.  He looked around his bridge, seeing five pairs of eyes fixed on him as his bridge crew, and his ship by extension, awaited orders.  The fateful decision formed in his mind, and K’lev opened his mouth.  “Ophelia, jam their sensors.  Tiza, catch them with the forward tractor beam, let’s lock them in place.  Ari, once we’ve got tractor lock, full astern; we’re gonna turn this into a tug-of-war, that we’ll win.  Tyrisa, target their warp nacelles, phasers only, and let’s limit them to impulse power.  Once they’re snagged and slowed, Tiza, hail them, and demand their unconditional surrender.”

Lieutenant Commander K’lev was many things: an engineer-turned-commanding officer, a tinkerer, a literature lover, a little bit prone to a case of impostor syndrome at times, and many more things besides, some of which he didn’t yet know himself.   But one thing he was not, at least in this moment, was a cold-blooded killer.  The tractor beam latched on, and Culver City shuddered bodily as her impulse engines jumped from full ahead to full astern.  Her forward ventral phaser array lanced out, a pair of beams striking the shuttle with incredible precision against the shuttle’s small warp nacelles, blowing out their coils and rendering them useless.  Tiza then hailed the shuttle.  “Ferengi shuttle, this is USS Culver City.  Shut down your engines and weapons and prepare to be boarded.”

After a moment, the sub-daimon in command of the now-snagged shuttle appeared on the screen.  “I demand to know the meaning of this attack!” he said angrily as his shuttle bucked around him, straining futilely against the tractor beam, much larger mass, and much more powerful impulse engines of the California-class starship.

“You are carrying a weapon system installed on your shuttle that is banned for trade, and the recent actions of another one of your shuttles with a dampener installed have resulted in a determination that your consortium’s remaining dampener-fitted shuttles are hereby considered to be pirates,” K’lev replied; he hadn’t actually gotten this far into working out the ad-hoc plan, so he hoped the sub-daimon couldn’t tell he was winging it at this point.

“But we haven’t stolen anything!” the sub-daimon protested.  In the background, noise started to come from one of the shuttle’s consoles, and K’lev observed on his chair’s armrest console that the shuttle’s impulse engines were rapidly overheating.

K’lev looked up.  “Sub-Daimon, in light of the actions of one of your other shuttles, General Order 13 has been invoked; I was well within my rights to come in shooting to destroy.  Now, your engines are about to melt; if you don’t want to blow yourselves up, stop your engines and shut down your weapons.”

The sub-daimon growled in impotent frustration; his shuttle’s energy dampener could not shoot at targets astern, and the tractor beam was too strong to allow the shuttle to swing around.  He turned to address someone off-screen, quickly tapping a few commands into a console as he did so.  “Stop the engines!” he said, then faced the screen once more.  “Fine!  You win, Starfleet, but the Consortium won’t forget this.  We will-” he was cut off as K’lev made a cutting gesture and Tiza closed the channel.

K’lev then turned sh’Livo.  “Have a security team report to transporter room 1.”  His gaze then met Tiza again.  “Go ahead and beam the crew of that shuttle aboard, to transporter room 1, then use the tractor beams to take the shuttle aboard; Shuttlebay 2, I think.”

Tiza and sh’Livo both nodded, beginning to work their consoles.  As the ship’s tractor beams began to move the now-empty shuttle towards Shuttlebay 2, an alert sounded from sh’Livo’s console.  “We’ve got another Ferengi shuttle incoming,” she said, looking up.  “Looks like it’s just armed with a disruptor, but it’s coming in hot.”

K’lev nodded.  “Stand by on phasers; Tiza, hail them,” he said.

A few moments – and a target lock – later, and a different Ferengi sub-daimon appeared onscreen.  “Hey, hey, no need for weapons; I just want the shuttle you’re taking and its crew released to me.  What’ll it take to do that?” he asked.

K’lev shook his head.  “Not possible; they’re under arrest as pirates, and the shuttle’s impounded for carrying banned weaponry.”

“The shuttle’s Consortium property; I have to insist you return it, but I’m happy to make it worth your while.  Just name your price,” the sub-daimon replied.

K’lev sighed.  “We don’t have time for this,” he muttered, the plight of the Blythe still very much on his mind.  “At this point, you’re trying to bribe a Starfleet officer, to aid and abet in piracy,” he said.  “Lower your shields, shut down that disruptor, and stop your engines.”

“Wha….?  I will not!” Came the indignant reply.

K’lev turned to sh’Livo.  “Put a warning shot across their bow with the forward phasers.  And stand by torpedoes if they don’t take the hint.”

The torpedoes proved to be unnecessary, and this sub-daimon had little appetite for a fight against an opponent that so significantly outmatched his shuttle; the warning shot alone was enough to convince him to stop and lower shields.  In short order, there were two Ferengi shuttle crews in Culver City’s brig, and now three Ferengi shuttles being stored in her shuttlebays, including one she had taken previously.  With the dramatics done, K’lev turned to Tiza.  “Work with Pelix; let’s go ahead and remove that dampener from the one shuttle, so if we do have to return the shuttles, they can’t have that back at least.”

Tiza nodded, setting to his orders.  K’lev sat heavily in his chair, glancing back at Lotharys, who offered him a reassuring smile; with a sigh, and a smile of his own, he straightened.  “Okay, I’d say our job here is done.  Let’s get back to Derganix, we’ve got a sister ship in need of our help.  Warp 8, Ari.  Let’s roll.”