—- Bridge —-

The USS Seattle dropped out of warp and eased through the solar system on impulse power. The crew scanned the planet and plotted the course that would take the nimble little Rhode Island class into a stable orbit around the abandoned world. Finding the two missing officers was priority one, and dealing with an arms dealer or worse a The True Way terrorist camp was the secondary objective.

”We have established orbit around the world,” the Chief Flight Control Officer Pr’Nor said in her usual toneless informative way. Whether she was flying rings around a firing pirate vessel, or docking she sounded the same. 

At tactical Lieutenant Junior Grade Rosa Flores scanned the surface, “Humanoid life signs present, seem to be a mix of humans and Cardassian. We have a contact on our sensors coming in fast ma’am.”

Captain Adriana Cruz looked up at the view screen to see a Galor-class Cardassian ship leap into view, and establish its own orbit around the planet. Cruz studied the ship, wondering what the Cardassians were doing there, and what that meant for the fate of her two lost crew members.

She tapped her comm badge, “Bridge to Engineering, it may get spicy in a minute.”

The sound of Lieutenant Commander Young’s voice sighed, and replied, “Yes bridge. We’ll fix what you break.”

Nodding to Lieutenant JG Flores Cruz had the ship hail the Cardassians, as she smiled broadly, “Hello!”

Cruz attempted to sound excited. Back on Earth when the cops had caught her she had discovered that most of the time she could talk them out of arresting her as long as she was overly effusive and could feign innocence. It had worked extremely well until it had not and she actually got arrested.

”What are you doing here Federation?” the Captain asked, not bothering to introduce himself. This was not a good sign, the fact was the most likely reason the Galor ship was there was because this ship was allied with The True Way, and had come to either drop off weapons or pick up something. It was extremely unlikely that they had just shown up because they were pursuing their own investigation. The fact that the Captain of the ship was not introducing himself meant that he did not see the USS Seattle as a permanent worry in his life. Just like you would not introduce yourself to a mosquito.

It was an apt comparison, though likely long in the tooth, the Galor-class could duke it out with a Galaxy-class and Cruz and the Seattle were not that much of a worry to it.

“We found a The True Way camps, and two of my officers are down there,” Cruz said, “We have a Manticore Class ship coming to help clean it up.”

It was a bluff but hopefully the mention of that would get Lieutenant Dorian in Strategic Operations to call for backup. Hopefully it was not too far removed and too late.

”We’ll handle it, withdraw now,” the Cardassian said.

Cruz looked down at her seat’s panel, where Dorian had sent her a simple message written in text, as opposed to spoken. A Excelsior II Class was twenty minutes out and on its way. Twenty minutes, Cruz doubted that the Cardassian would let her tap dance for that long, or put up with her games, but the longer she could stretch it. At least with an Excelsior II ship there they’d even the odds a bit.

“Well I really would, I don’t particularly care about this planet, and I’d love to have you do my dirty work, but you see as I mentioned I have crew down there. You know crew right, always getting themselves into situations that I have to save them from with my secret weapon,” Cruz said.

This interested the Cardassian, “What is your secret weapon?”

He nodded to his crew off screen, apparently signaling that they should rerun scans of the smaller Rhode Island Class vessel. She knew that she could not keep this going for long and stood putting, walked towards the screen and put her hand on Pr’Nor’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. The pair had not practiced a secret message, but Cruz hoped that the Vulcan would start to make plans for evasive maneuvers.

”Well if I told you that it wouldn’t be secret,” Cruz said. 

The Cardassian looked less than pleased with the answer.

”Captain, the Cardassian shields are up,” Rosa said, “They‘re targeting us.”

”Now why would you do that? Okay, I’ll tell you, the secret weapon is gumption,” Cruz said.

The Cardassian looked at her, not quite sure what to make of the situation. He finally seemed to decide that everything would be much more simply once he had destroyed the USS Seattle so he put that reality into motion. With a curse word, that Captain Cruz was certain had been in Cardassian but had been translated, he cut the transmission.

The USS Seattle rocked as phaser fire hit its shields. Cruz sat down. 

”Pr’Nor evasive maneuvers, keep us alive until help comes,” Cruz said.

”It is statistically unlikely that we will survive this encounter,” Pr’Nor pointed out.

”Good news then, when we all blow up nobody will say you did a bad job flying,” Cruz said.

”I am an excellent pilot,” Pr’Nor said as the ship leapt forward, turning and twisting.

”If the ship blows up that’s a demerit on your record,” Cruz said, “Flores save our torpedoes but fire phasers at their weapon systems. We’ll try taking them out when we’re not running for our lives. Now let’s see how long we can keep dancing. Metaphorically speaking Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Pr’Nor was focused on her duty station but was able to nod, “Thank you for the clarification Captain.”

The Seattle rocked once more. This time the back of the ship was hit with something, a the rest of it was thrown or course and began trumbling. Cruz was tempted to get out of her chair, but a had a feeling that it would be impossible to keep her footing if she did stand. As it was she had to grip the arm rests or her seat. The ship’s strikes against the larger ship’s weapons seemed ineffective but it was the best they could do if they were to hold back some photon torpedoes for later. The ship rocked again as it was stuck, the shields dipping at the much smaller Rhode Island, hitting locations that Pr’Nor had visualized in her mind. It was a tough task, because avoiding Cardassian fire meant being unpredictable and Vulcans were not particularly suited to creativity and unpredictability.

”Shields down to seventy-two percent,” Lieutenant J.G. Flores said, firing off another barrage of phasers.

”Our backup has increased speed, ten minutes,” Dorian said.

Luring the Cardassians into a planet’s atmosphere seemed both unlikely and pointless. It had worked against pirates but the Cardassian ship was unlikely to have difficulties in gravity the way that patched together pirate ships had on their last mission. It was pointless to order people to keep them alive for ten minutes, that much went without saying. The trick was figuring out how they were going to stay alive for that long.

”Flores start using torpedoes, fire at will,” Cruz said still wracking her brain for that one neat trick that would let her live to see the arrival of backup. The ship only had so many lives, and Cruz was begging to think that like a cat they had used up all nine. She had to think of something, something clever that would get them through this. Somewhere in the range of ninety-five lives were counting on her.

“Get behind it, get it turning, its systems are old, we gotta make them work for each shot they hit us with,” she said, not sure that simply being a harder target was the way out of this. The ship rocked again and she tumbled out of her chair as damage reports started to come in from all decks of the ship.

”Get that moon between us and the Cardassians,” Cruz said gesturing to the screen, trying to put distance between them and certain death. 

It was not enough, but it was something. A bit of extra shielding, at least for a moment as the ship cowered and hide from their pursuer. 

“We have something on our scanners,” Flores said.

”Our backup?” Cruz asked.

”Wrong direction, three Galor-class ships,” Dorian said as three more ships dropped out of warp.

”We’re being hailed,” Flores said.

“On screen,” Cruz said. Not that she had much choice, an unwinnable fight had just turned extra special unwinnable. 

“This is Gul Brazack, we are here to investigate some intelligence we received about The True Way,” he said.

”I’m Captain Cruz, we’re here for the same reason, and we have two officers down on the planet,” Cruz said.

”Well we do not wish to carry this conflict on any further, we will be departing. I trust you will deal with this camp for us,” Gul Brazack said.

Cruz nodded, “Please take your ship with you, I’d suggest it’s Gul was making a tidy profit off the terrorists.”

”Yes, we will take it with us, as you say. We will look into any corruption in the ship’s crew,” the Gul said.

”All four Cardassian ships are departing the system, the three are flanking the original,” Flores said.

”Call off our backup, do a damage assessment,” Cruz said, “and ready an away team.”