James smiled.  “Thanks.”

Jurand moved to start working on another console, letting James look up onto the platform. He couldn’t see her from here…

He sighed and walked over near the warp core.  He spotted the small lift that led up and immediately walked onto it.

He still was a bit apprehensive…  They’d both been friends for a while now and usually kept in contact…but she had ignored all of his messages since they had come back from the Kalium galaxy…

Finally, he pressed the command to send the lift up and waited impatiently for it to reach the top.  He wondered what happened to make her ignore his messages.  Despite the fact that his hitting on her sometimes annoyed her, she always…always sent him replies…

The slow lift finally reached the top, letting him off and onto the top deck.  He looked around, and sure enough, she was on the other side of the warp core working on a console.

He paused for a moment as he looked at her back…then decided to walk over to her.  Casually, he did so, moving around the warp core, until he was behind her.

She heard him walk up behind her and turned around to face him.  She didn’t say a word, though…which was unusual.

“Hiya Vicki!” he said lightly, trying to lighten her up a bit.  What’s with the morbid face?

She simply nodded, not changing her expression.  “James…can I help you with something?”

He frowned and glanced behind her.  When he looked at her again, he said, “Yeah…you can tell me what you’ve done with my friend and give her back!”

The grin overcame his face…but hers did not change…and the tension was killing him.  Vicki suddenly shook her head and quickly turned back to the console she was working on.  He noted, however, that she didn’t start to work on it.

James moved to the side of her and leaned against the console.  “Seriously…what’s wrong?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, clenching her teeth.  “James…don’t.”

He frowned and tilted his head in curiosity.  “What do you mean?”

“Don’t…”  she glared at him.  “Don’t go around hitting on me!  I don’t need that right now!”

He was taken back by her statement.  “I haven’t hit on you yet!  I was just being friendly…”

“You always have something else in mind!”  She was nearly in tears now, frustration surfacing…  Something was seriously wrong…

When she turned away from him again and looked at the console, he moved closer and put his hand on her shoulder.  In a soft voice, he asked, “Hey…what’s wrong?”

She clenched her jaw as a tear rolled down her cheek.  At first, he thought she wasn’t going to answer…but then she looked at him with red, teary eyes.  “I never told you…but before we were stranded in the Kalium galaxy…I became engaged to someone.”

He hadn’t expected that.  They had been close enough to the point where he even considered her more than just a friend.  Not intimately, just…close.  She had always told him everything, even in her messages.  He found it curious before that she hadn’t talked to him earlier on the Dragon-A…and that she had never told him she was serving aboard the Dragon.  Now she’s saying that she had become engaged, and she hadn’t told him…

“To who?” he asked, curious.

She closed her eyes for a moment, obviously frustrated about something…  “Carson Phelps.”

“Hey!  I remember him from the academy!”

She nodded her head.  “That’s him…”

She looked down at the deck…  “He…died…in that last battle with the Borg…  I just found out a couple weeks ago.”

Hearing her say that hit him like a sledgehammer.  Her fiancé had died.  The one man she had been willing to spend the rest of her life with.  Really the only man he would trust to marry one of his closest friends…

“I…I’m sorry,” he said mournfully.  “I had no idea…” He looked down at the deck, feelings of guilt filling him.

She suddenly flew at him, wrapped her arms around him, and started crying.  He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her, embracing her…hoping that he could somehow comfort her…knowing that he really couldn’t.

He would just have to be there for her…like she had always been for him…

For what seemed like hours, they stood there, Vicki letting her tears roll onto his uniform, James not even caring.

Finally, her crying slowly turned into sniffs.  A few moments later, she pulled away and looked at him.  “James…thanks.”

He didn’t even smile like he normally would have.  He simply nodded in reply…

Suddenly, the deck lurched underneath him.  The alert klaxon sounded as Chris’s alert voice came over the comm. System.  “Red alert, all hands to battle stations!”

They looked at each other, only somewhat knowing what was coming.  They nodded to each other, then turned away to attend to their tasks.

K’Taul braced himself as the ship lurched again from weapons impact.  He looked up at the view screen to see the Shauny pass over the Romulan Warbird, the Dragon following behind it closely.

“They aren’t responding to our hails or the Shauny’s hails,” Vendar reported, alarm clearly present in her voice.

“As expected,” Chris stated from the chair next to K’Taul’s.

“Speak for yourself,” K’Taul stated, looking at a tactical screen on his console.  “When I was a first officer, they wouldn’t shut up!”

The ship lurched again.  A light fixture exploded on the other side of the bridge, sending sparks across the bridge and smoke into the air.

At that moment, James stumbled out of the turbolift and immediately headed for the helm.

“Lieutenant, break formation with the Shauny,” K’Taul ordered as James took the ensign’s place.  “Let’s make their job harder, evasive maneuvers!”

“Aye, sir!” he replied quickly, already keying in the commands.

“Vendar, scan the Romulan vessel,” Chris added.  “See if you can find any battle damage, and if you do, see if it’s from a Federation ship.”  K’Taul looked at him curiously.  Chris replied to his silent question with, “Might as well see if this is the source of our disappearing ship…and you never know, that battle damage might be something worth targeting.”

K’Taul nodded and looked back to his tactical screen.  “Very good, Commander.  Lieutenant Marquet, make sure to keep at least ten quantum torpedoes in our arsenal.  We may yet need them after words.”

“Aye, sir!” she replied quickly, concentration on her task, giving her voice an edge.  “I’m not sure where this thing’s getting its power from, but its weapons are more powerful than any Warbird I’ve ever seen!  Its shields are standard, but its weapons are dangerous!”

“Sir, I’m reading some buckling along the Warbird’s starboard nacelle!” Vendar stated quickly.  “The residual energy signature matches that of Federation phasers and torpedoes!”

When the ship lurched hard again, K’Taul asked, “How does this information help our current situation?”

“If we target their nacelle, we might cause a power surge in their warp system.  I’m not positive, but I think it would disable the Warbird!”

“Why are you not positive?” K’Taul asked, definitely worried about the assumption.

“It’s a Romulan Warbird, not something Starfleet has had much experience with!” she replied quickly.

He thought about her suggestion for a moment, then thought that it was as good a plan as any.  “Good enough!” he stated.  “Lieutenant, target their starboard nacelle.  Inform the Shauny to do the same.”

The ship lurched again before Vendar could reply, only this time, it lurched hard.  “Shields down to eighteen percent!” Ada reported in an alarmed voice.

K’Taul’s eyes went wide when he heard the report.  “They’ve only hit us a few times!”

“As I said, their weapons are powerful!” Ada replied.

“The Shauny’s shields just went down!” Vendar stated.

Five Quantum torpedoes impacted on the Warbird’s shields as soon as she said that.  They started bright green, moved to white, then disappeared after the last torpedo hit.  K’Taul’s tactical display showed that they hadn’t just vanished from visibility, but that they were down.

The Dragon was coming around behind the Warbird and started to fire phasers.  The Shauny was running perpendicular to the Dragon’s course and started to pass in front of the Warbird.

That’s when it happened.  The front was the strong point of the Warbird, for its primary torpedo launchers were there…  Five green-hued torpedoes shot out from the Warbird at the Shauny, which tried to outmaneuver the shots…but failed.  As she maneuvered, two impacted on her stardrive section, one hit its port strut, while another hit the port nacelle.  Although the fifth one missed…the damage was done.

“The Shauny’s core is losing containment!” Vender shouted in alarm.

“Beam them off!” Chris shouted, shooting up from his chair.

“Too late!”

With that, an explosion ripped across space, tearing the Shauny to pieces in the process.  Soon, not even debris remained as the energy from the antimatter explosion engulfed her.  Within moments, she was gone with only trace gasses to show for it.

A sort of sadness engulfed the bridge crew.  Everyone hung their heads…everyone except K’Taul.  He was too angry.

“Target their nacelle and fire full spreads of weapons!” he shouted out.  “I don’t care how many torpedoes we have left, just do it!”

The view screen switched to an aft view, allowing K’Taul to see six Quantum torpedoes and several phaser shots lance out at the Warbird.  She was big and couldn’t out-maneuver the weaponry…and therefore took every hit.

The nacelle exploded in a cascade of energy and light.  To K’Taul’s surprise, that wasn’t all that exploded.  Several sections of the green mammoth started to explode.  He knew precisely what that meant.

“Power surge!” Vendar called out in alarm.

“Get us out of here, now!” Chris added, sitting back down in the chair so that he had something to hold on to.

They didn’t have a chance to get any further away.  A huge explosion only caused by an artificial singularity ripped across the Warbird…and through space.  The Dragon was close enough to where it didn’t take long for the resulting energy wave to hit.

The ship lurched hard, almost sending K’Taul to the deck.  He gripped the command chair with an iron grip…and within moments, it was over as inertial dampers compensated.

Silence engulfed the ship, the chaos finally over.  Chris let up on his iron grip and sighed a sigh of relief.