The cargo bay on the twelfth deck was illuminated briefly by several columns of light from a transporter beam which dissipated as soon as it appeared. One of them was a security officer, with his rifle charged and the torchlight from the rifle active, illuminating the area. One of them pulled out a tricorder to begin their scans and that one was Chief Petty Officer Cooper.

Cooper looked from her tricorder at Lieutenant Vogler. “The spiders in main engineering haven’t moved an inch since our arrival. Safe to say they don’t seem to care at the moment.” She stored her tricorder and picked up the inactive data storage device. “Got our bait right here, ready to go on your order.” The plan was to find a good choke point and activate the bait. Since these spiders seemed so eager to gather new data since that attack on the Altai, it seemed like a sound plan.

Astrid glanced around the cargo bay.  “The bay doors create a natural choke point and we can hold the high ground from the upper level catwalk.  Unless they can bore through bulkheads we’ll have the back wall to protect us from attacks from behind.”

Feeling her handshake she placed her other hand on it to calm down and lets the tricorder do its work “The low power emission on these decks might be the cause of it. If we activate any console it might trigger these spiders to activate” Katsu felt unease at this whole operation and has flashbacks from her previous encounter. 

“I believe that’s the point.   I’m open to suggestions.  If you think there’s a better location for this encounter I’m all ears,” Vogler said.

Cooper noticed Katsu and smiled, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Relax. We got the best Hazard Team in the quadrant. We’ll squash these bugs real quick. Besides, we won’t be touching any consoles. We have the bait to make them come to us when we are ready.” She spoke softly with a wink before she looked at Vogler. “I believe in your tactical judgment, ma’am. I can place it in the center so that we can surround the bait, and get them right when they least expect it.”

“Make it happen,” Volger ordered.  “Hazard team spread out on the catwalk.  Doc you find a quiet place to hide.  I hope we don’t need you, but I sure as hell want you going down either.”

Randall nodded. He had basic weapons training at the Academy,  but he hadn’t qualified since.  He knew which way to point the phaser and that was about it.

As everyone moved into position, Cooper set down the storage device and pressed a few buttons to prepare it. “Alright. It is ready to go.” Cooper said before she moved to get into an advantageous position herself. She then held out her tricorder, ready to hit the trigger to activate the device. “On your mark, ma’am.”

Astrid nodded, “Make it happen.”

Cooper nodded back to Vogler, looked down at her tricorder, and pressed the button. The device soon came to life and began to emit the energy reading that it was designed to do to grab the mech spider’s attention.

It was quiet at first. Astrid could just hear her breathing in her suit, and she consciously forced herself to relax.  Then on the distance in the stale thin air of the ship came the mechanical whirring and clicking of the bugs.  “Be ready,” she announced to her team as she raised the phaser rifle to her shoulder. “Hold your fire until my command.”

Cooper put her tricorder away and took cover behind some storage crates with her left arm resting on the crate, left hand gripping the rifle grip, aimed directly at the doorway of where she hoped the spiders will come from. Though she periodically looked at the maintenance hatch every few seconds.

“Look alive folks,” Vogler announced as she brought her phaser rifle to the ready.

Suddenly a single bug burst into the cargo bay.  Astrid held her fire, and she felt sweat running down her forehead,  which she couldn’t wipe away in the helmet. Then there was the main body of the bugs.  As they got bunched at the entrance the ones behind crawled over top of the ones in front.

“Fire!” Astrid ordered as she squeezed off a well aimed shot striking the first bug bursting it onto pieces. 

Cooper took a deep breath and held it as she tapped the trigger, launching a phaser bolt that smacked into the deck just in front of one. She cursed under her breath, focused, and fired another shot that smacked into the chest of the mech that ended its life.

Astrid and the rest of the Hazard Team opened up fire.  At this point they were getting the hang of combating these things and most of their shots were effective.  One by one the robotic nightmares were destroyed.   

Moving to Katsu Astrid placed a hand on the other woman’s shoulder.  “We should save one for study. Any idea on how disable one of those things?”

Cooper happened to overhear Vogler talking to Katsu. She stood up out of cover while making quick adjustments to her rifle and then commenced rapid fire on a single mech. Her aim goal was to take out the legs and with the succession of rapid fire at the settings provided by Starfleet Command to decimate the alloy material these things were made of, she was successful. Good thing they don’t bleed, or it would have bled out from the loss of limbs. This tactic of course depleted her power pack, which forced her to eject it to insert a fresh one. She could only hope that was the last mech she disabled and not left herself open to an attack.

“Clever trick,” Vogler said approvingly. She ejected her power cell and replaced it with a fresh one, and returned her attention back to the bugs.  She made two quick shots destroying two bugs crawling up the bulkhead.   Stepping to the edge of the catwalk she started firing down on them as the started climbing up the supports. 

Cooper shrugged her shoulder. “Just wanting to get this done. Did we take out fifteen of them yet?” Cooper asked but the answer was given when Vogler shot a few more.

As the last of the bugs fell the cargo bay silent nobody moved.  The intensity of the firefight had shifted to the realization of the carnage and danger they had been in. Glancing around Vogler shouted, “Okay, people let’s get to Engineering.”

She swung over the edge of the catwalk hooking her boots around the handrail and slid down to the maindeck of the cargo bay.  Scooping up the now very much functional but harmless bug that Cooper had disabled she shoved it into her pack where it protested, but couldn’t do anything about it.

The petty officer sat in the pilot seat of the shuttlecraft that had just dropped out of warp. They adjusted their course towards the Altai while they could very well see the Excelsior-class vessel, the Romero, floating there with no power to speak of. The petty officer looked over their shoulder to see if the two officers that they were transporting were awake or paying attention but nevertheless, per training and policies, they still felt the need to state the obvious. “We are on approach to the Altai, sir.”

Jaso nodded to the pilot, “Thank you Petty Officer.” He looked at the approaching ship. “It’s a bit bigger than I thought it’d be.” He gathered his things. ”Please notify Command that I’d like to get into Engineering and get underway.”

The petty officer gave a brief nod before they returned their attention to their controls and opened a channel to the Altai. “Altai, this is Takayama. I have your chief engineer on board. Submitting the transfer orders now.” The petty officer initiated the data transfer and patiently waited for the reply.

“Takayama, data transmission received and reviewed. Please approach shuttle bay one for landing. A security officer will be on deck to relay further instructions. Altai out.”

The petty officer frowned and then shrugged before they readjusted their course. Soon the shuttlecraft would be landing on the hangar deck of shuttle bay one and as stated, a security officer was patiently waiting. Soon as the rear hatch opened, the security officer wasted no time.

“Excuse me, sir. The Captain left instructions for when you arrived. He needs you to gear up in an EVA suit, your standard away team mission gear and to transport over to Bravo Team. Bravo Team’s mission is to reach Main Engineering and attempt to restore power to the Romero,” The security officer reported. “That is all the instructions say.”

“Understood.” Said Jaso. Quickly stopping at Main Engineering, Jaso grabbed standard away team gear. He walked to the Transporter Room carrying his EV suit. After attaching his suit’s helmet, Jaso stepped on the teleporter pad, and nodded to the operator, “Energize.”

Astrid peered around the corner her phaser rifle preceding her.  So far all the corridors had been thankfully and disturbingly empty.  Where was the crew?  Did they abandon ship?  If so what had happened to them afterwards?   And what of the bugs? Where did they come from?  Did they get them all in the cargo bay?

She could see the doors to main engineering at the end of the corridor.   The massive sliding doors sat partially ajar like the power had went out as they were sliding shut.  “Almost there. Move out,” she said to the rest of the team.  Her half of the Hazard Team had taken up the rear protecting the rest. 

The Xinidi-Reptilian and one of her closest confidants approached. “That was too easy boss,” Korel said.

Vogler fell in line with the group, Korel at her side. “I agree. Hopefully, we just got a milk run.”

“They don’t pull us out here to do milk runs,” Korel observed.

“Korel my friend, I sincerely hope you are wrong.”

“Altai to Bravo Team Leader. Chief Engineer Jaso has arrived and is beaming over now. Also, we do not detect any more of those mechs on sensors. It appears both teams have eliminated the threat.”

Cooper shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s just hope that there ain’t any lying around dormant.”

Suddenly the corridor was illuminated by a transporter beam appearing just down the corridor. Then the moment it had appeared, it was gone, depositing a silhouette.

When the transport cycle finished, moving from bright to low light caused Jaso’s eyes to squint. He looked around the group of officers. Jaso moved to the closest one. “Lt. Erdian,” Jaso said, offering his hand.

“Chief Petty Officer Cooper,” She held her gloved hand out to shake Jaso’s. “Normally I am handling all operational duties on the listening outpost but Captain insisted I help restore power to this ship. I do have quite a bit of knowledge on Excelsior-class ships but having a Chief Engineer will certainly make this go a lot quicker.”

“Excellent Chief, I need a sit-rep. I only had a cursory reading of the mission brief. The ten minute read to the transporter room didn’t provide much information, something about spider mechs?” 

Astrid stepped forward, “That’s what we are calling them. Lieutenant Astrid Volger,  Hazard Team.  Glad you are here Chief.  I got one of them bugs in my pack if you want to study it later, but for now we need to get basic systems up. Anderson front and center!”

A Hazard Team member pushed through the crowd of officers, “Yes Boss?”

“Lieutenant Erdian, this is Crewman Harland Anderson.  He’s a trained combat engineer,  but aside from Chief Cooper he’s going to be your engineering team. The rest of us are a bit… well…” She glanced around, “Inexperienced.”

Jaso turned to the three, “It’s good to know I have a team, regardless of their skill.”

“With the three of us and my knowledge of Excelsior-class vessels, we should get this baby back up in no time.” Cooper smiled.

Jaso opened his tricorder, checked the readings, and spoke to Cooper. “I’m grateful for your knowledge; I haven’t been on anything bigger than a Nova-class.” He closed the tricorder and picked up his engineer’s kit. “Let’s get to work, lead on.”

“Right! Let’s get the power on.” Cooper smiled.

Vogler indicated with a nod of her head, “Move out people.”

Cooper turned towards the half-open massive sliding door, which luckily was enough for them to slip through in between with their EVA suits on and she took the lead. She waved her rifle around, with the torchlight being on that is, to get a good look around before locating the main engineering console in the center. “There it is. Well, hard to miss usually.”

Cooper removed the power pack she was carrying like a backpack and set it down beside the console. “Let’s see. The first thing to do is connect this power pack to the console, and see if we can coax auxiliary power online.” Cooper mainly spoke out loud, not to anyone in particular while she took the cable from the pack and opened up a panel in the main console. Once she inserted the cable plug right in, she flipped the power pack on and stood up to watch the main console come to life. “All right! That’s a good sign. Now to send some power to the backup computer to gain access to the basic commands and then determine if we can bring auxiliary power on or not.”

Crewman Anderson looked over his shoulder from a bank of panels, “Batteries are completely dead. I hope there’s deuterium because we’re going to need it for the auxiliary power generators.”

Jaso was about to give a warning, but by the time he turned around the batteries were depleted. “Those batteries are great for a single console, but not to much for jump starting a computer bank. Still,” he did some quick calculations in his head, “it should have kept the console on longer than that.”

He opened his tricorder, “I’m getting some weird magnokinetic energy readings. I can’t get a lock on the source.” Jaso opened up his kit and pulled a tool from it. He threw it and watched it turn end over end in the air. Suddenly the tool made a sharp right turn and picked up speed. It had a series of slowing down and speeding up, before landing with a clink, on the side of the warp core. “Bingo! I found you.”

Cooper frowned at what the Lieutenant was doing and then raised her brows when she saw what happened to the tool. “Oi vey.”

“That shouldn’t be possible. It’s almost as if its magnetic shielding has failed and coalesced into a micro gravity well. But that warp core has been cold for nearly twenty years.” He thought a moment, staring off in the distance. “The protons would still be present though, even if they aren’t conducting the matter/anti-matter reaction anymore.” He turned to his team, “I think we just found our power source. We can’t start the core, but maybe we can syphon power from a reaction. It wouldn’t take much, a couple maybe.”

“It’ll be tricky, we’ll have to go in dark. Any power or magnetism will by drained by the well.” He turned to Vogler, “Lieutenant, can you get us over there? As low tech as possible?”

She nodded, “You needing an escort? We can do that.”

“Something like that,” Jaso said. “I’m thinking something similar to a spelunking rig. I don’t trust our momentum once we get close to the anomaly. We’d be sitting… floating? ducks once we got out there. There’s no telling how it will affect our mass difference. It could be negligible or,” he pointed to the tool still stuck on the core, “we could end up like our little friend there.”

“I think our EV suits are as low-tech as we’re going to get, sir,” Cooper mentioned. “Unless you got some non-magnetic tools.” She smirked.

“Chief I’m less worried about the suits than our mag boots. Though it will be nice not to worry about dropping a tool.”

“Bravo team, hope you are all doing well. Alpha team has cleared out the bridge and we are beginning our investigation. How goes restoring power?” The voice came from Captain Hayes.

“We’re in engineering sir.  The damage seems pretty bad down here. We’re working on getting the lights on, but,” Vogler glanced at Jaso for a preliminary report.

Jaso clicked his comm, “Lieutenant Erdian here, sir. Preliminary attempts with the battery cells have failed. We’ve discovered a magnetic anomaly on or near the warp core.  I have a few working theories on its existence. We’re attempting to circumvent it and use the remaining protons in the core to cause enough matter/anti-matter reactions to restart the computer core.”

“I’m no Engineer sir,” Vogler stated, “I’ll have to take the Chief’s lead on this one.  He’s speaking Greek to me.”

“Lieutenant Erdian Jaso? You have impeccable timing. From the sound of it, you wouldn’t be able to get near it in our current state.” said Hayes over their commlinks.

Cooper nodded her head in her helmet. “With our magnetic boots, I wouldn’t recommend it. But if we get the auxiliary power generators online, we can restore life support and artificial gravity.”

“Do it. We’re just here for the data on what happened to this ship, we don’t need to completely revive it. Keep me posted, team. Hayes out.” And there was a brief chirp of the comms link terminating.

Cooper looked over at the main central engineering terminal. “Perhaps we can coax the generators online from our little power pack here. Or maybe…wasn’t there a mission report of a starship transferring power to another?”

Jaso began to speak when the communication link terminated. “I wasn’t attempting to restart the core…” he said to no one in particular. “But that does sound like a fun challenge.” He turned to Cooper, “So we’re clear Chief, when I said low tech, I meant deactivating our mag boots too.” He took a long look at the warp core and walked to the engineering terminal. Jaso tapped on the dead terminal in thought. ”Wait, I think I have an idea.”

Cooper smirked at his comment and shrugged in a joking way after he had made it clear to her.

“I need a three-way conduit with a diversion valve” He called out, his voice echoing through Main Engineering. Jaso was met with blank stares. “It’s a piece that looks like this,” He made a shape with his hands. The team dispersed to search.

Jaso turned to his engineering team. “We’re going to set up a relay system with the battery packs. Daisy chain them together with the diversion valve leading to the main generator.  Overload one of the packs, and send a pulse through the chain. It’ll work like a centrifugal turbine, collecting residual power from the dead batteries as it circles. When enough kinetic power is collected, we divert it to the main generator. I’d need a minimum,” he counted the math on his fingers, “of three battery packs, but no more than five.”

“Split the difference perhaps and go with four?  I’m not sure how many tries we’ll get before we burn out the packs,” Anderson suggested.

“Good idea Crewman. If things go the way they’re supposed to, we won’t have another try. We also won’t need one. If things work out. But it’s a smart idea to save at least one for a safety measure.”   

Crewman Korel approached with a device in his hands returning from a storage locker, “This the valve you are looking for?”

“Let’s take a look,” Jaso said, turning the valve over a few times. He walked over and pulled a tool out of his kit. He tapped it against the valve, causing it to ring out. Jaso hummed along with the ringing until he harmonized with it. “The resonance is a bit off, but this will do nicely.” He brought it over to the team.

Jaso made the final connection and looked at the relay, “Well, I’ve built cruder… Good job team!” He walked over to the battery pack, “Setting power output to 136%. Anderson, watch the diversion valve. When the power level reaches 44%, divert it to the generator. Anything less will be too weak. Cooper, watch the terminal to make sure the power goes where we want it to.”

Pressing the power button, the battery began to vibrate and heat up. Its power was released to the next battery, and the next, until it completed the circuit several times.

As the energy built up Anderson switched the valve to the main generator as the chief had ordered.

Cooper kept an eye on the terminal but the moment she heard him mention the valve, she knew what idea he had in mind. She remembered having to do this to a few other starships before. “There it goes!”

Jaso watched as the raw power sparked into the generator, bringing it to life. He walked over to the terminal that had sparked to life. “Nice job Chief,” Jaso said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Tapping his comlink with a smile, Jaso said, “Erdian to Hayes, we restored auxiliary power. It’s not much right now,” he looked at the console display, “Critical systems, artificial gravity, and… 22% LCARS access. We’ll continue to work on it, but I’d recommend not pushing the computer core too hard until then.”

“Hayes to Bravo Team. Check the main access panel if you can, if you see anything in there hooked up, do not touch it!” Hayes warned with more seriousness to his voice than he’s ever put into.

“On it captain!” Vogler responded worry etched on her brow. “What’s this about?”  She watched Jaso hoping he was overhearing this.

Jaso joined Vogler’s search and tapped his comlink. “I wasn’t planning on unplugging things just yet, captain. Is there something we should be looking for?”

“Just tell me when you find it,” said Hayes, being a little vague.

After she had left her equipment on the main terminal and deactivated her mag boots as she entered the warp core chamber and headed towards an access panel that was not completely shut. She noticed it the moment the lights came on and made her rather curious. She grabbed the lip of the panel and swung it open to find a strange-looking device hooked up. Cooper tapped her comlink, “Found it, Captain.”

“Don’t touch it! I’ll be right there,” said Hayes.

But in mere seconds of a time, a mech spider that had been dormant and hidden from sensors had dropped down from the ceiling and landed on one of the consoles. It had come to life the moment it sensed power was restored to the ship and began to complete its task. Which was to hook itself up to the console its hand landed on and begin transferring power to the device. Cooper saw the device come to life and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the spider. She turned in place and pointed at it. “Stop it!” But it was too late. The second someone raised a rifle at it, the device activated.

On board the Altai, at the operations station, T’Pel had kept herself busy by cataloging the standard stellar debris and space phenomena. She had also recalibrated and ran diagnostics on the ship’s sensors, keeping them at peak efficiency to Starfleet’s standard. She had also pinpointed their exact location between both the Breen and Federation borders. She even calculated their distance from their current location to the listening outpost, Starbase 72, and Earth. She was just in the process of calculating the distance to Vulcan when a warning cropped up on her display. T’Pel turned in her seat and looked at the Lieutenant at the con. “Sir, sensors have picked up an unusual energy signature coming from the Romero.”

Lieutenant Bradley pushed himself out of the captain’s chair and approached her station to take a look himself. “What kind of energy?”

T’Pel returned her seat to face her console and began to analyze the data. “Analyzing it now.”

Bradley turned to look at the coms officer. “Hail the Captain’s team.” But the coms officer was distracted by what they saw on the main viewer and then pointed. Bradley turned back around to face the viewer and saw that Romero was gone. “What the hell? Where did they go?!”

“They did not leave by normal means, Lieutenant. The warp core was still offline, warp drive was not possible. Impulse engines were not engaged,” T’Pel reported.

“Playback to just before Romero disappeared,” Bradley ordered.

T’Pel brought up the recording on the main viewer and dialed it back just as requested and then played the recording. Now they all saw, some of them for the second time, Romero disappearing in a flash. At first, it looked like lines were streaking across the hull and then it just blinked with a flash of light. Then T’Pel’s console notified her that it completed the analysis. “Sir, the energy signature. There is a trace of proto-matter.”