The tension never bled out of the bridge, with Tiberius and Lorena still standing watching the main viewscreen as it projected a display of the towed vessel and inset window of the unknown vessel following them. Data scrolled on the main screen displaying the numerical distance between the Rubidoux and the towed infected vessel, and also from the Rubidoux to the pursuing craft. Tiberius checked his chrono and frowned. They weren’t going as fast as they needed to, but the ship was having trouble with maintaining its tractor beam lock on the infected vessel without just tearing it apart under graviton sheer at warp speed.

“Commander, notify the Hopkins we have uninvited guests. Let them know it may be prudent if they meet us halfway. Also that they may have to. I’m not sure our soft spoken friends out there will allow us to make the rendezvous uninterrupted.”

Lorena nodded keying in the message on an encrypted channel and sent it. Tiberius stood folding his arms and studied the screen. As if focusing on it hard enough would allow him to read the thoughts of the opposing captain. He’d never shown any telepathic talents. Not that he had any hope at all. His own mother was human, but Kyle and Danny were both the children of his now current mother who was part vulcan.

“What are you up to…” he mused silently.

Having that other ship lurking off their rear end just had the hairs on his neck standing on end. But he had to keep a confident front up for the sake of the crew. Using the infected ship as a shield felt crude, but the crew were in his hangar bay so technically it wasn’t a moral issue. Still, whatever was happening to that ship was leagues away from normal much less possible or even believable. He’d have loved to pour over the information coming in from the sensor feeds, but the ship lacked the resources and facilities to make any proper use of the data. Such discoveries were not for the Rubi to find.

“Captain we may have a problem.” Thorne said.

Tib glanced down at her, “What is it?”

Her hands danced across her console quickly and she pointed to some information on her console. Tib leaned down to take a look and frowned. The other ship was closing in. Slowly but steadily. Not enough to immediately cause alarm, but if you watched the distance numbers close enough, the enemy ship was gaining at a steady clip.

“They’ll overtake us long before we make it to the Hopkins.”

He leaned back studying the main screen. So. They were going to force his hand. That was unfortunate. His brows furrowed as he mused on possible responses. “Maintain speed and heading for now.”

“Captain, our response time to bring up shields and weapons will be considerably longer if we have to engage directly after a warp tow.” Jel’kan said. His reptilian’s eyes narrowed. Tib got the impression he held himself very tense. His mind wanted to go down the rabbit hole of wondering if that was just the way predators typically carried themselves.

“Ok people. Let’s brainstorm. We’ve got a health/environmental crises in our hanger and 200 meters behind us. An unknown vessel in hostile waters that is slowly edging closer. I need options and responses.”

“Do we have to save the ship?” Commander Kael asked.

Tib studied her a moment, “You’re saying cut the dead weight?”

She nodded. “We wouldn’t need to fire a torpedo into it to cause a detonation. It’s inside our warp bubble. We could just beam one over. Detonate its core and deny the other ship the infected vessel. The resulting anti-matter explosion should tend to any potential fall out.”

“Ok. Scuttling it is an option. But a bit extreme. What else?”

“What about projecting sensor echoes? Fool the other ship into thinking there are more vessels? We could force them to back off. Buy ourselves time.” Vossk suggested.

“Crafty. I like it. How would you do it?”

Vossk’s brows knit, not for being put on the spot, but because Tib didn’t know how to do what he was suggesting already. “Rather easily actually. We could use our own sensors to and the deflector dish to create some elaborate false readings. The emissions would confuse the other ships own sensors into thinking it was sensing blurry sensor hits.”

“Like ships in stealth or something?”

Vossk nodded hesitantly, “Or large vessels approaching at high warp. Space time folds in interesting ways and because we’re in the heart of the triangle, ambient emissions will help further conceal any chance of detecting the ruse they might have. In normal space they’d probably know it was a bluff. In here? More difficult to tell. For best odds of success I would recommend doing it just as we hit this stellar nursery nebula in our projected heading.”

A star chart popped up onto the main screen in another inset window showing their flight path as it cut through the bottom edge of a large nebula. Vossk highlighted previous sensor scans of the nebula’s concentration. “The gas composition inside this nebula also contains some heavier elements leftover from the death of a large star. Those heavier elements will act as a natural sensor screen, shielding us from pin point scans. But this will also scramble the effect of our sensor dummies, making it harder for the enemy to determine if they are real or false.” Vossk said.

“Meaning unless someone is looking out the window, they won’t know if it’s real or not?”

“Precisely Captain.”

“Anyone else?”

“We drop out of warp and engage them. Shove the infected vessel into them, and fire on it.” Eliminate both issues at once.” Jel’kan said with his chest out.

“Uh huh. Anyone else got anything that doesn’t involve gratuitous violence?”

He caught the amused smile that Kael kept just barely hidden. No one else responded so he snapped and clapped. “Alright, we’ll go with Vossk’s plan then. Maintain course and speed, Mr. Vossk? Please mark a position where we’ll start our sensor dummies.”

He took his seat and leaned over to Kael, “Sensor dummies. I like it.”

He thought he could hear a deflated Jel’kan grumbling about how much more fun it would be to torpedo the infected ship and watch it blow up the second hostile. He knew it was just bravado though. Jel’kan’s people were as patently aggressive as Klingon’s were. It was only geospatial distance that kept the two peoples from crossing paths else it was likely they’d have warred each other into extinction.

Waypoint Vossk

The Rubidoux reached her designated way point and it was time to execute the ruse. Tib gave his science officer a nod. Lt. Vossk’s hands danced across his console. Occasional clacks issued from his talons while he typed. The goal was to trick the enemy ship into backing off by playing games with their sensor data in an environment where that data couldn’t be trusted.

It wasn’t the best plan or even a big plan, but it was a plan that didn’t require them fighting their way out…yet. Tib wasn’t against it, but he wanted to exhaust his options first. Secretly, there was a part of him that really liked the plan.

“How positive are we this will work?” His XO asked softly.

“I’m not. But Sun Tzu said that all warfare is based on deception. So it feels right to me.”

“Sun Tzu, the ancient philosopher who wrote about war and combat?”

“The same. He laid the foundation for how to think strategically for generations and he was born in a time before man had even mastered electricity. Wild isn’t it?”

“Sometimes I’m amazed humanity could ever leave Earth.”

“You’ll find that’s an oddly common sentiment, commander.”

As the Rubidoux towed the afflicted vessel, something curious happened. As the ships traversed through a stellar nursery, key elements were drawn out and into the vessel. It fed and grew. The sensor games with the other klingon raiding vessel were only marginally successful. They backed off, but they also primed their weapons.

In response, the infected vessel struggled against the Rubidoux’s tractor beam.

“It’s doing what?” Tib asked as the ship shuddered under the sheer.

“It’s pulling on the tractor beam.”

“Like a scared dog…” Tib said. “Drop the beam, cut the ship free.”

“But sir? What if it’s spreading its contamination?” Thorne protested.

“Relax, Lt. We just took this thing on a merry stroll and no one else has sprouted wings. I think whatever is happening, it’s isolated to just the ship and the former crew.”

A security alert pinged at Jel’Kan’s console. He glanced up with a concerned look. “Speaking of the crew. They’ve all been beamed out.”

“We’ll worry about how later. I want to know what’s happening on that ship.”

The image appeared on screen with a tactical overlay in an inset window. The infected vessel formed up alongside the Rubidoux. Like a guard dog.

“They’ve formed up alongside us. What appears to be weapons is powering up. They are targeting the raider vessel.” Jel’kan said with apparent confusion.

“They’re protecting us. Why?”

Vossk’s head tilted thoughtfully. “Perhaps they’ve imprinted upon?”

Tib frowned. Absently his hand stroked his beard a few times. “But are we friend, family, or master?”

“I dislike pets.” Jel’kan offered from his station. The crew couldn’t tell if he was just being honest or making a joke. When he didn’t laugh, everyone simply nodded awkwardly.

“I’m not much of a fan of someone thinking I’m their master either. But for now maybe we can scare off this raider vessel. Open a channel.”

He stood, taking a few steps to address the ship on the main view screen.

“This is the USS Rubidoux, I’m Captain Tiberius Rain. Desist your pursuit or you will be fired on.”

“The Klingon ship has cloaked sir.” Jel’kan reported.

“Status of the infected vessel?”

“Still holding position to our starboard side, weapons armed. It appears to be in a defensive posture.”

Tiberius folded his arms. What an odd array of circumstances. “Commander, your thoughts?”

His XO pursed her lips in thought. “Science thought the ship was transforming the crew into something like cells right? What if the ship is more like a new xenobiological entity. It might have viewed our attempts to tow it free of the nebula as rendering aid. Thus, the positive alignment with us in a hostile encounter.”

“No good deed goes unrewarded?”

“Put crudely, but yes.”

Tib nodded. “That was my assessment as well. Let’s see if we can chat with our new friend? Comm, open a channel.”

“This is Captain Tiberius Walker of the USS Rubidoux.”

There was a long pause and no response. Everyone exchanged uncertain glances, with each other save Tib. He simply waited patiently in the center of the bridge with his arms folded awaiting a reply. Eventually a return signal came back, audio only. It sounded like a chorus of voices. The crew perhaps. It chilled his blood to hear it because it struck too close to the borg to be comfortable.

“I copy you.” It said.

“I… have no name.”

Interesting. A collective hive mind that acted as one, but also processed as one. Perhaps the crew voices were merely mechanical applications of the intelligence driving the ship itself? As if his science officer had read his mind, her hands were already flying across her station running passive scans. He smiled. Good work, he thought.

“We can give you one if you’d like? Are you aware of others like yourself?”

Again a long pause before a single “No.”

“What about Alpha then? In an ancient alphabet of my homeworld it came first. Like you.”

“Alpha.” It repeated, as if chewing on the name. “I like this Alpha.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Alpha. I’d love to sit down and have a more in-depth discussion with you later, but for now, our more immediate concern is the hostile vessel that cloaked itself. Not for a minute do I think they turned tail and ran. If I were a betting man, which I’m not, but if I were, I’d bet they were looking for a weak point they could try to pounce on.”

“You seek to draw them out of hiding.”

“I would prefer that. But they aren’t the type to be interested in a chat.”

“They seek to harm us?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Standby.”

And then the line went silent. This time, Tib shared in the confusion and worry that quickly went around the bridge.