The impression that the mighty starship Atlantis was attempting to give off was a lone starship, all by herself, in a dark and scary corner of the galaxy. It wouldn’t fool anyone at all, the Sovereign-class line of ships being Starfleet’s premier combatants when called to perform that duty. But by the time the Breen arrived in orbit of the miserable little ice-ball Atlantis had dedicated herself to, there were no Tholian ships in orbit and no other surprises hanging in orbit either.

Just one lonesome little ship in a rough neighbourhood.

That had been the sole reason for the Breen to drop out of warp as far away as they had, their sensors searching the cosmos for anything that could explain where the Tholians had gone, or whatever else crafty Starfleet officers had thought up.

“That’s right, keep looking,” Mac muttered as he sat forward in the command chair, hands gripping the arms lightly. “Take your time boys, it’s not rude to call.”

The bridge was a little darker than normal, but not obnoxiously so. Tikva had insisted on changing some of the red alert defaults, including the base lighting levels, and Mac had to agree they worked. Status panels dutifully pulsed red, unused monitors displaying ‘Condition Red’ on them in a centuries-old graphic that had only been given face-lifts over the decades. Atlantis at red alert was a beast to be reckoned with.

“Pretty sure the captain keeps her inner monologue, well, inner,” quipped Samantha from the secondary ops console.

“Lieutenant,” was all the reply she got when Adelinde spoke up, bringing an early end to any banter that might arise.

Mac couldn’t help but smile. The banter was a good sign, meant people weren’t entirely stressing out about a bad situation, but at the same time there was a time and place for it and Adelinde was a good judge of it. If he ever got his own command he’d likely have to knife-fight Tikva to try and pry Adelinde as his XO. He knew why she’d resist, but dammit did he want a capable right hand.

Or hope for some sort of parallel reality doppelganger, transporter clone, unknown twin or something equally bizarre that seemed to pass for a Tuesday in Starfleet.

“Report on the Breen,” Mac finally said, having let silence settle over the bridge for a handful of seconds.

“Breen battleship, Whiskey-class by Command’s designations,” Adelinde said from behind him. “She’s hanging outside her own suspected weapons range. Sensors can confirm her weapons array is active.”

“And they’re banging away on their active scanners,” Rrr added from Ops to Mac’s fore. “They keep scanning us and the wreckage, but nothing else as far as I can tell. They aren’t being subtle about it either.”

“They’re confused. They know there are Tholians in the system but they can’t see them. And they know Starfleet is usually averse to conflict, without a good plan, so us still being here is proof enough we’re up to something.” Mac’s hands slapped the chair’s arms before he pushed himself to his feet. The plan, such as it was with Commander Kaltene, was working so far. “T’Val, you ready to make Atlantis dance?”

“It’s a starship, sir, not a ballerina,” the Vulcan helmswoman replied. “Standing by for evasive manoeuvres.”

“First sign of them shooting, don’t wait for me, just get us in nice and close to give Guns the best angle you can.” Mac then took a few steps, tugged at his uniform tunic, rolled his shoulders back and straightened his spine. First impressions after all. “Rrr, hail the Breen ship.”

The viewscreen snapped to life, the tactical display that had been occupying it gone, replaced with an intensely cropped image of a Breen environmental suit helmet. They wore them even aboard their own ships, what did that tell you about them? “Commander Charles MacIntyre, USS Atlantis. Appears you’re looking for something. Could we offer our assistance?”

Then Breen could have been pulling faces and sticking its tongue out, assuming it had a tongue, at Mac under that helmet. Eventually, it spoke some sort of computerised voice that was dutifully translated by the ship’s computer with a vaguely male intonation. “You were ordered to abandon the system. As you have failed to comply your ship is forfeited to the Breen Confederacy. Prepare to be boarded.”

“I’m going to have to respectfully decline your offer,” Mac said with a smile.

“You are one ship, tactically inferior to our own. Surrender now and execution will be replaced with forced labour camps.”

“This ship is a brand spanking new cruiser so I suspect your tactical analysis is out of date, so here’s my counteroffer – turn around, go home and we’ll be on our way in a few hours. You can tell your bosses you scared us off and I can tell my bosses I scared you off, we both get to look good in the eyes of our command chains.”

A staring contest with a helmet, a closed one especially, was no fun. You couldn’t read the other’s face; you couldn’t stare someone down who could be looking at something else. It was difficult, but Mac gave it his best. And then the channel cut off, the viewscreen snapping to a magnified view of the Breen battleship a few light-seconds away.

“Targeting scans from the Breen,” Adelinde announced as Mac went right back to the command chair. “Torpedos, multiple,” she continued.

The forward view rapidly swerved as T’Val threw Atlantis into a relative dive, then a series of turns, rolls and spins of her own design as she lunged towards the Breen ship, closing the distance for the ship’s phasers to get within reach.

“Rrr,” Mac shouted to the Gaen, who was already tapping away on his console.

“Message away,” they replied.

As both ships closed lances of particle beams lashed out, wiping away incoming torpedoes or licking at opposing shields, the spheres of protective shielding energies flaring into the visible spectrum of blue and green as phaser and disruptor fire lit up the space between the two ships.

While the Breen ship had possessed a formidable forward array of weapons, her flanks and aft were not as well armed, whereas Atlantis was more evenly spread with weapon emplacements. Taking advantage to rake the Breen’s aft shields with repeated phaser fire and a volley of photon torpedoes as she raced past, Atlantis did her best to stay away from the turning Breen vessel’s forward aspect, taking to broadsiding the larger ship across her after aspect. Atlantis could orbit the battleship a little faster than it could turn on its axis.

And then diving in from above came a flight of six starships, three Tholian web-spinners and Atlantis’ own Valkyre-class fighters. They’d been hiding in the planet’s northern magnetic field; the whole magnetosphere having been excited a mere hour ago by Atlantis purposefully dumping charged particles into it to give the hiding ships a better chance. The Tholians pummelled the Breen ship with more phaser fire, a handful of torpedoes thrown in for measure as they dove past the Breen, rear weapons lashing out as they broke away. The fighters had been hanging back, waiting and when they had their chance, they launched the full-sized torpedoes they had been underslung with like torpedo bombers of old. The torpedoes weren’t moving as fast as if they had been launching from Atlantis’ own launchers, but they carried the fighter’s speed and were at such close range they was no time to react to the launches.

“Shields down to fifty per cent,” Rrr announced as the bridge was rocked once more, the Breen ship having not spared a moment’s attention towards the other attackers, focusing its ire on the single most threatening combatant. More fire chased at Atlantis, smashing against the shields, a new aspect brought to bear between each volley as T’Val kept rolling the ship along its long axis as it hurled fire back at the battleship.

This singular focus was to the Breen’s detriment as the torpedo strike from above slammed home in the aftermath of the Tholian dive attack. Two quantum torpedoes splashed against the shields, spending their fury on collapsing the dorsal shield aspect, the third found its mark though, burying itself in the ship’s hull before detonating, ripping a wound deep into the Breen battleship hull.

But not before it had managed to bring those forward disruptor banks and torpedo launchers to bare on Atlantis one last time. Weapons racked the starboard side of the ship, shields flared under the intense assault, holding back the torpedoes that found their mark through defensive fire. But a few small gaps had appeared and disruptors gouged at the hull of the mighty ship, ripping open whole compartments, spilling atmosphere from the ship, the bright green plume of a plasma fire evident along the ship’s flank momentarily.

“Breaches on decks ten, eleven and twelve,” Rrr called out. “Forcefields in place, bulkheads are closed. No casualties.”

“Breen ship is losing power,” Adelinde called out, bringing the Breen ship up on the main viewscreen. Lights were flickering all across the vessel as she countered in her spin, with no RCS puffs to counter it. The dorsal wound from the torpedo bloomed with internal light, clear signs of fires burning, obviously with their own oxidants to keep doing so. “They’re out of the fight.”

“Hail them,” Mac ordered.

“No response,” Rrr replied.

“Keep trying.” Mac turned on Samantha. “Harpy flight?”

“All in one piece,” she said. “Your people flew beautifully T’Val.”

“They flew satisfactorily,” the Vulcan corrected. “But I will pass along your assessment.”

“Oh wow.” Rrr’s exclamation caught everyone’s attention as they turned to the viewscreen once more. The Breen ship was essentially dead in the water, a lucky strike having crippled the ship, and the Tholians had opted to take advantage of the situation. All three ships had formed up and after a bit of choreographed flying separated from each other, each with a three of energy back to their starting point – the formation of a web. “Never thought I’d see this in real life.”

“Get me Kaltene,” Mac ordered, getting to his feet. “Commander, is a web truly necessary?” he asked as the Tholian came up.

“Do you wish to destroy the Breen ship instead?” she asked.

“No, but they’ll be hours, if not days making basic repairs. We can get what we want and leave.”

“The web will…limit…their choices for conflict.” The translator had put the pauses in for Kaltene and Mac mentally noted to go back and check the logs as to why. A quirky of Tholian language or difficulty in translating? “It will prevent their interference in our respective operations, hamper their sensors when we leave and dissipate in a few days, allowing them to return home. We have opted not to take the Breen ship as a trophy back to the Assembly.”

Mac stared at Kaltene for a few moments, then sighed. He couldn’t argue with an insurance plan after all. “All reasonable precautions. How long will you need to weave this web?”

She said something, the computer taking longer than normal to translate, enough to be noticeable. “Twenty minutes,” came the reply eventually. “We would appreciate your monitoring the Breen and disabling any weapon system that looks like it might be powering up.”

“Understood.” And with that Kaltene cut the comms, the viewscreen returning to the three Tholian ships at work. “You heard the lady,” he said.

It was an hour later that Mac was gathered with the senior staff, Atlantis parked in such a way as to have the completed Tholian web in clear view through the conference room windows. As such no one was in their seat, all opting to join him in staring at the marvel before them. Sure, every cadet had heard about such a thing, but seeing one was considered right up there on the list of things you will never see in your career. And now Atlantis had a crew full of people who would never, ever be trusted when recanting stories of previous commands.

“Right, let’s get this started,” he said, not moving for a seat of his own. “Gabs, how’s it looking?”

“Well, we’ve got people back on the ground now. Tholian assistance is also a thing apparently. They’d been scanning Aitu for days before we arrived and they’ve given us their records, so we’ve got a few more items of interest we’re collecting. We’ll have the complete memory core dump in a few more hours and then we’ll lift the unit out and bring it aboard ship.” The science officer sounded positively giddy about that. “I’ve got a team who are dying to deep-dive the data. We’ll also be wanting a holosuite for a few days non-stop to help with examining the data.”

“Done,” Mac said easily enough. He was keen on seeing the work himself after all. “Guns?”

“Shields back to full strength after recharging the emitters. We’re down three quantum torpedoes and twelve photon torpedoes. Not a concern at this time.” Adelinde was one of two people in the room not plastered to the window, the other being Terax.

“Excellent. Doctor Terax?” Mac continued.

“A dozen minor injuries, nothing severe,” the Edosian doctor reported. “We’re also building a make-shift deep freeze storage facility in cargo bay 2 since you authorized Doctor Pisani to bring aboard all the Aitu crew she could recover.” The man huffed once, twice. “When will we be meeting up with another ship to transfer the bodies so they can be sent home?”

“As soon as I can arrange it, Doctor, I promise.” Mac looked over his shoulder to offer the doctor a reassuring smile and was met with the same glare that Terax always had. “Velan, how’s she looking?”

“Nothing severe thankfully. The few blasts that got through were attenuated by the shields a fair bit. And the ablative armour did a fantastic job blunting the blow as well. Ripped open a few compartments, but didn’t punch deep. Some machinery space, a blown-out sensor pallet, crew quarters exposed to space.” Velan started to rattle off the list but then stopped himself. “We’ll have the hull sealed up in a few hours, but we’ll need a couple of days to make it look fancy.”

“Luckily the captain isn’t due back few a week, so we’ll finish up here and then bolt away from the Breen border. Find some nice little world we can park up at and sneak in a few days of R&R while engineering makes good the damage.” Mac reached over and patted Velan on the back. “And please, match the paint colour, will you?”

“Conspiracy to hide damage from the captain?” the engineer asked with a laugh. “She’ll look just like she did before some brutes decided to see if my girl here could fight,” Velan said, reaching out to pat one of the beams between the widows. “She’s not just pretty, she’s tough.”

“That she is. Right, enough of this gawking. We’ve got work to do folks. Let’s get the Tholians what we promised them, get our people off that planet and then get out of here.” A chorus of ‘aye sir’ circled the room and people started to filter out, but one had slipped into the room, waiting patiently until everyone else had left.

“Sir,” Fightmaster said after the door was sealed shut and a count to three. “There’s a small matter I think you should be made aware of.”

“Fightmaster, as the executive officer, it’s my duty to know about everything aboard ship. After you it would seem.” Mac waved the junior officer to the window and pointed at the Tholian web, glowing brilliantly in the space aft of Atlantis. “Keep an official record of this with you because trust me, no one is going to believe your word about this.”

“I keep official records about everything sir,” the yeoman responded.

“Of course you do.” Mac sighed. “What’s the matter, Fightmaster?”

“I was reviewing the specifics of the damage report with Lieutenant Michaels, in order to make temporary accommodations while repairs were being enacted. Mostly junior officers that we’re housing in temporary quarters but one officer, in particular, came to light sir and I thought you might want to personally recommend a solution?”

At that, Fightmaster produced a padd, the screen a schematic of quarters on deck ten that had been exposed to vacuum. None serious just buckled hull plating that compromised their atmospheric integrity. They weren’t on the top of Engineering’s repair bill, listed as a couple of days for proper repairs. But one set of quarters had been highlighted by Fightmaster.

Pisani, Blake.

So the yeoman’s intelligence net had finally netted him that piece of information.

“I’ll take care of this yeoman. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

“Certainly sir,” Fightmaster replied. “Doctor Pisani has returned to the surface with her team though.”

“Naturally.” He sighed, with a smile though. “Your dismissed Lieutenant.”

He waited till Fightmaster was out of the room, then turned, sitting on the window sill.

“Computer, begin log.” He waited for the affirmative chirps. “Commanders log, stardate…”