“You are in our space without authorisation. As a result your ship will be impounded,” the Devore Imperium Inspector in front of Raan announced with barely suppressed glee. 

Raan gave him a politely, concerned expression to look at. One he’d dubbed ‘starfleet standard’ even though he’d like nothing more than to rip this odious little man’s head off his shoulders. They’d all known that as soon as the Imperium set foot aboard the ship, they would hunt down every telepath they had but the level of brutality they’d employed was totally beyond the pale. Raan had noted every one, mentally promising payback. A lot of payback. 

“Of course. We didn’t realise that we had strayed into areas that were out of bounds.” It was a total crock of the proverbial but Raan lied with a straight face, and a ‘by the book’ attitude. “I’m assuming that we have some right of appeal? A body we can make our case to?”

The inspector shoved his face into Raan’s. Or he would have, but then realised halfway through his surge forward that Raan was significantly taller. The bullying tactic didn’t work when you were eye to nipple height with the person you were trying to bully. He settled on glaring up instead and sneering.

“Appeal? I don’t think so. We know all about you federation and your tricks! Including hiding telepaths in your transport buffers.”

“We did not hide anyone,” Raan countered, then frowned as an explosion somewhere aboard the ship rocked the bridge. 

“Report! What’s going on?” he barked, just as three more explosions went off somewhere on the lower decks. 

“Internal sensors offline,” Callahan called back. “Working on rerouting power now.”

“Someone get in touch with engineering!” Burton ordered, striding across to the engineering bridge station, empty because the officer there had been hauled away by the Imperium heavies and Bennett was down in main engineering. 

One of the Imperium soldiers went to block his way. To Raan’s surprise, Burton snarled back at the man. “Unless you can operate an XT-7000 line engineering console, then I suggest you get out of my way. If we have problems down in engineering, the whole ship could go up!”

“I’ve managed to get sensors back on decks three and four sir, but we have hull breaches on deck five. Emergency procedures in place.”

“Talexar levels are out of phase,” Kovash added her voice to the cacophony. “That’s going to caus—“

Another, closer explosion rocked the ship. 

“Captain, we have problems in engineering,” Burton called out. “I can’t raise Bennett and we’re losing containment.”

“Talexar systems failing!” 

“Warp core breach imminent!”

The calls came thick and fast, punctuated by more explosions. The Inspector looked up at Raan, a nasty little grin on his face. 

“On second thoughts, I think I will let this little problem resolve itself. Teams, wrap it up, we’re leaving.”

Raan bit back a gasp, allowing an expression of panic to show over his face. “You’d… leave us here? Like this? The ship is about to blow!”

The Imperium teams had already filed out, and the Inspector followed them, his laugh echoing around the bridge as they beamed out. 

Raan dropped his panicked expression and slid a glance over to Burton.

“Are we clear?”