K’Taul stared at the view screen, feeling like his face was something uncontrollable…like what ever face he was making was not of his own will.  He didn’t have a mirror…but he knew just by the silence on the bridge that it wasn’t inspiring confidence.

Medicine was never his strength in the academy, neither was anatomy.  He felt completely helpless now.  He felt like his people were about to die…and that he was powerless to stop them.

The planet on the view screen was a violent one.  On the outside, it almost looked like a gas giant shrunk down in size…nothing too violent.  He barely could notice change in the clouds, and yet those he thought he did notice were probably in his mind.  It looked peaceful.  Yet on the surface, he knew just how violent Y-class planets were, how deadly.

Then, to make things even more dangerous, there was a complex on the surface dedicated to creating biological weapons…

As he thought of all of this, he thought of the common reference students made at the Academy, the hell planet.  He even recalled reading one of Voyager’s logs a year back, they had encountered one such planet and called it the Demon planet.

His thoughts were broken when an alarm went off on the security station.  K’Taul looked back at the tactical station and at Lieutenant-Commander Perry Cantor.  He examined his readings, then looked up at K’Taul with a surprised look.  “Captain, two Vrol ships are approaching at warp nine point nine!  Estimated time to arrival is ten seconds!”

He shot out of his chair and spun around to fully face Perry.  “What?  Why didn’t we see them coming?”

He shook his head.  “I’m not sure, but they’re almost here, and their weapons are armed!”

K’Taul spun around to face the view screen.  There was no fear, just surprise and agitation.  “Red alert, all hands to battle stations.”

As he was used to by now, the lights on the bridge dimmed as bulkhead panels took on a red hue.  The all-too familiar alert klaxon sounded.  He remembered when it used to annoy him…but lately he was becoming used to it.

“Here they come!”

With that, the view screen switched to another view of only the star field…until two elongated shapes appeared, which formed into two ships of very familiar design.  They both fired six gold-hued spheres of energy, similar to torpedoes…and they were heading for the Dragon.

K’Taul stared at the image for a moment, letting instinct take over.  When he noticed Lieutenant Commander Tom Halkrat at his side with a concerned face, his instinct kicked in.  “Now!”

Gravity seemed to increase and James engaged every thruster he could to get out of the way.  The ship lurched hard, nearly throwing K’Taul off of his feet…but his tactic had worked.

“Only two hit us, the rest are maneuvering back towards us,” Perry said.

K’Taul nodded and moved back to his chair.  “Lieutenant Trikal, full impulse.  Evasive maneuvers, your discretion.”

“Aye, sir.”

With that, the ship lurched forward, causing the torpedoes to miss again…but the gold beam weapons of the ship were harder to out-maneuver.  Several impacted on the Dragon’s shields…but K’Taul was not alarmed yet.

“Shields at seventy eight percent,” Perry reported.

“Target the weapon’s array on the Vrol ships,” K’Taul ordered.  “Full phasers.”

“Target locked.”

“Fire!”

With that order, several crimson beams lanced out and impacted hard on the shields of the Vrol ships, which were also gold-hued.  They must have a thing about the color gold…

“Minimal damage,” was all K’Taul heard after the first wave of phaser fire.  That first wave, however, was met with four torpedoes, two from each ship.  All but one missed.

As K’Taul reaffirmed his position in his seat, he decided to try another tactic.  Obviously phasers weren’t very effective on their shields.  “Target the weapons and shields of one ship and prepare to fire a full spread of Quantum torpedoes.”

“Aye, sir, arming torpedoes.”

“Fire when ready!”

He expected them to immediately launch, but was disappointed with a three second delay.  Finally, six blue-hued torpedoes launched, all finding different locations on the same target.  When the flare of the gold shields died, he noticed that there was no noticeable damage.

“These ships are a hell of a lot tougher than the ones we encountered before!” Perry stated in alarm.  “I don’t know if we’re going to survive long enough to disable both of them!”

K’Taul nodded ahead.  “Lieutenant Trikal, think you could perform your fancy maneuvers in an atmosphere?”

He looked back at K’Taul with a look of surprise on his face…surprise and hesitancy.  Finally, he nodded.  “I believe so.”

“Then do it.  All hands prepare for planetary re-entry.”

James nodded and turned back towards the helm.  Immediately, the Dragon banked hard…only to find the planet straight ahead.

“I swear, this ship is getting more atmospheric flight than a Runabout does,” Tom commented wryly, his concentration apparently on damage control.

K’Taul smiled a toothy smiled and nodded.  “Perhaps, but at least her ability to do so gives us a major advantage…especially against ships of that size.”

Tom shrugged casually.  “True, true.”

Chris paused in mid-motion, frowned, then stepped back.  He looked down a corridor, and saw exactly what he thought he saw: a lit-up console.  The first one they’d seen since the containment room.

“Hey, Vendar,” he said, stopping the small army in mid-step.  She turned around and looked at him.  “Think you could access an active console with your tricorder without an active subspace signal?”

She frowned slightly and moved back to where Chris was.  When she looked down the corridor, she saw the active console and immediately headed for it, a purpose in mind.

The group had already doubled back to try to access the consoles in the first room, and as the containment field was weak there, they could barely access it.  However, to their dismay, the consoles there were used solely for maintaining the containment room and could not access any other part of the systems.

Chris immediately moved next to her while the rest of the security team formed a perimeter.  She had her tricorder out while touching the screens on the console.

After a while, she shook her head.  “I can’t access it directly…but I might get it to recognize the translation matrix of our tricorder.  We might be able to access the system directly through the screen.”

She looked at him, waiting for his approval.  He stared at the gold, alien language on the screen, then nodded.  “All right, do it.”

Vendar nodded and moved back to work.  The letters on the screen started to change, some to basic, some to other types of languages.  She seemed to have trouble with the matrix at first, then clarity hit and the screen changed to pure basic.

Frowning, she looked closely at her tricorder.  “According to this…the alien language we saw before…” She looked at him, concern and even a hint of fear on her face.  “Is Vrol…”

He felt his eyes go wide, his mind racing.  The Vrol…not the most pleasant species…

Chris shook his head and cleared his head.  “We’ll deal with that later, try to find out where the containment generator is.”

She nodded and looked back to the console.  She began tapping in commands on its control subroutine board and started going through different systems.  After about a minute, she finally found the subroutine she was looking for and brought up a map.  “All right…looks like we go down this corridor about thirty meters, climb down two levels, go down that corridor ten meters, left, twenty meters, then right through a door…and voila.”  She turned around and smiled at him.

Chris smiled in return and nodded.  “All right then.”

Suddenly, a gold beam passed right between Vendar and himself, causing them both to jump back.

“Phasers on stun!” Chris shouted, already collecting himself and ducking down.  There was nothing in this corridor to duck behind, but the aliens were ducking around the corner.

Two security officers went down, gaping holes in their chests.  Chris gawked at them for a moment, then brought his own phaser up in anger.  He fired two quick shots, only hitting one target.

“Fall back to the stairwell, now!”

“Shields at fifty two percent!”

K’Taul started grinding his teeth in anger.  The ship wasn’t just bucking and heaving from weapons fire, the atmosphere was highly unstable.

“I don’t know how, but they seem to predict half of my maneuvers,” James said in alarm.  “The other half isn’t too far off!”

Then K’Taul thought of something.  He stood up, as difficult as that was, and looked at the orange and light-brown surface and clouds all around the Dragon.  He wondered just how much they valued their lab…

“Lieutenant Trikal, set a course for their lab,” he ordered while moving forward.  “Hold position over it…and let’s see if they’ll risk accidentally hitting it…”

“Altering course to planetary heading 132,” James confirmed.

Ada fired two quick shots up the stairwell as her last security officer ran past her, then moved through the door herself.  They were on the correct level now…it was up to Vendar’s memory to get them where they needed.

She looked around in a frenzy, making sure no other Vrol were in sight, all the while trying to follow the group.  Her security team was doing the same, effectively holding back the entire group.

Following Vendar’s lead, they turned left down another corridor.  As they did so, Ada noted that several of the consoles had power down here, obviously indicating that there was less damage from those creatures down here.

Speaking of which, where are those creatures?  I would have expected more than one…

As that thought passed through her mind, the entire group came to an abrupt halt.  Vendar started pounding commands into her tricorder, which she had already attached to the console next to a door.  When the translation matrix finished, she started keying in a few commands on the console itself.

More gold beams lanced passed the group, one took out another one of her security guards.  Ada spun around and fired her pulse rifle at the Vrol at the end of the corridor.  They ducked back around the corner, but the team managed to take out two of the Vrol.

“Got it!” Vendar exclaimed.  With that, the door slid open.  Ada fired a couple shots down the corridor, then glanced back to see that most of the team was filing in as quickly as possible.  One officer was grazed on the arm and caught by another one.  She looked down the corridor, took one Vrol down, then followed the last person in.