((Appalachia, Bridge))
“I see flashes!” Lieutenant (jg) sh’Livo called from tactical, pointing at the viewscreen.
K’lev, who had been quietly typing an entry into the ship’s log, snapped his gaze onto the screen. There it was! Another flash. He stood, moving forward to stand between the helm and nav consoles, Lotharys joining him. “Think it’s the Slivin trying to tell us something?” He asked.
Tiza shook his head. “I don’t think so… There’s no pattern to them, or at least not one I can see.”
Normally, that would have been cause for concern; if there was a fight raging outside, a stray phaser blast or torpedo would be devastating, given Appalachia’s current condition. But then something happened that changed the game: a hole began to form in the field that held the ship trapped. “Do you see…?” Lotharys asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“See? Yes. Believe? Not sure,” K’lev replied in a bit of a trance.
A ripple appeared in the growing hole, resolving itself into the aggressive lines of a B’rel-class bird of prey. A raucous cheer went up around the bridge, echoed down in The Mountaintop by the crew. K’lev and Lotharys shared an excited embrace, which had barely ended before he turned to Tiza. “New message on the lights: ‘Damn good to see you! Please get us out of here.’”
As Tiza set to encoding the message, K’lev tapped his combadge. “K’lev to Pelix. Looks like we may be about to get outta this mess! Stand by to restart the impulse engines as soon as we’re free, and let’s get the core back online too.”
“Already on it,” came Pelix’s reply.
The change in the signal lights ended up not being neccesary as the Slivin streaked in and drift skidded itself back around in a sharp turn so they were facing the hole and parked right in front of the Appalachia. A fraction of a second later the tell tale green beams of the graviton powered tractor beam snagged ahold of the Starfleet heavy frigate and with a slight bump in the hull under their feet, the Appalachia and her crew were soon moving towards the hole in the energy draining field that had held them captive for the past few days.
((Bridge, Slivin))
“Captain, I’m pick up a separate cluster of singularities moving towards us, bearing 164.” Ka’hor reported.
Knowing from the reports he had read about the Soval incident, Kerak knew there was no time to waste.
“Bamet, warp 1 now! Shunt power to the tractor emitters.”
The young XO rapidly tapped the commands into her console and the ship and her charge streaked away from the area for a few seconds exactly as they had planned.
A few million miles behind them the battle against the Kleptarky fleet that had emerged from asteroid erupted as the stout, dark black and green ships that vaguely resembled elongated saucers engaged the remaining vessels of the Alpha Alliance’s flotilla.
((Appalachia, Bridge))
As Slivin leapt to warp, towing Appalachia behind her, Tiza looked up from something on his console, excitement spread wide across his face. “Power’s coming back up! Slowly, but we have partial battery power available.”
Phillips and Sigurdsson both began working their own consoles. “Impulse engines’re in startup,” Phillips said, “and I show the warp coils able to take up a charge; we should have both available shortly.”
“Sensors are back online, sir,” Sigurdsson added. “I’m tracking another singularity cluster, but we should be outside of its reach at this point.”
K’lev nodded. “Tiza, please send our thanks to Captain Kerak for the rescue, and tell him to expect a more proper expression of our appreciation to be delivered later.”
“With pleasure,” Tiza replied with a smile, sending the message, over actual comms this time and not flashing lights.
sh’Livo interrupted the merriment with more serious news. “That ship we were chasing? I think their friends’re here,” she said. “There’s several ships in the asteroid field, and,” she looked up. “I’m picking up weapons fire.”
((Slivin))
“Open a channel.” Kerak said after he was informed that a signal was being recieved from the Appalachia.
“Onscreen Captain.”
“You’re surgeon did me a favour several days ago Commander K’lev. It was a pleasure to repay the debt. We standby to assist if needed. Otherwise we will help screen you as you make repairs.” Kerak exclaimed with a nod.
Someone said something to K’lev over his shoulder before he replied. “Well, we could use a power transfer; if you could spare 2 or 3 terajoules that would be enough for us to recharge our warp coils and hopefully get main power back online.”
“Consider it done Commander, my first officer will contact you when we finish our preparations.”
((Appalachia, Bridge))
K’lev nodded. “We appreciate it, Captain. After the transfer, we’ll be able to get back up pretty quickly; been prepping the core restart for a while now.”
Once the channel closed, he opened an intercom channel. “Bridge to engineering. Pelix, we’re expecting a power transfer from Slivin; once we’ve got enough, let’s get the core back online.”
Fortunately, the preparations that Pelix and his engineering team had done over the last day or more paid off quite well; within perhaps ten minutes of the power transfer, they had the warp core starting up. With the core now online, power levels began climbing quickly, a fact which both Tiza and the power display on K’lev’s console confirmed. “Think we’re about ready to go join in with the others?” K’lev asked.
A series of nods made their way around the bridge; while revenge was something K’lev avoided – especially after the incident in Duwalla – the ship that had baited Appalachia into the trap had done so without provocation. While K’lev wondered if it was a Kleptarky ship, he still couldn’t ignore that the trap could have killed everyone aboard, and so the ship and its crew needed to be brought to justice.
He took a deep breath. “Okay… red alert!”
The 2 vessels then began to move back towards the scene of the battle with the Slivin taking the lead out in front of the Appalachia.
