He nodded to her and started moving.  “I’ll get back to the Dragon.”

“Red alert!” she shouted.  “All hands, battle stations.  Starship crews report to their ships!”

“Report!” K’Taul ordered, moving off of the turbolift and towards his chair as fast as he could.

“About five minutes left,” Chris said, standing up from the command chair and allowing K’Taul to take his place in front of it.  He looked at to view screen to see that the Dragon was still stationary.

“We’re about to disengage from DS9,” he added to K’Taul’s relief.

“Magnetic clamps released,” Vendar reported.  A dull clunking sound echoed through the Dragon, echoing her words.  On the view screen, the Dragon began to finally move away from the upper docking port.

K’Taul sat down and brought up a tactical readout.  The Defiant and the Romulan Warbird Tiaura were already in position, the Dragon the only ship not ready.

The Dragon moved ‘up’ about two hundred meters, moved over and away from DS9, then finally took up a position with the other ships.

“The station’s shields are up, all ships report ready,” Ada said, her voice calm, prepared.  “Weapons status fully operational, though we only have twenty six torpedoes left, but hopefully with the station and the two other ships, we won’t need them all.”

“Less than a minute,” Vendar said.

“All hands, prepare for battle!” Chris added.

Another ship battle, something K’Taul was beginning to tire of.  That was all he had encountered while commanding the Dragon, while Chris and other officers had the fun of surface combat once.

However, hopefully today would be a glorious victory, and not a glorious death…

“They should be here any second now, give or take!”

Suddenly, the stars in front of the ships began to waver, and a moment later, a Romulan Warbird appeared.  Green-hued energy blasts immediately lanced out, hitting everything, including the station, and the Dragon.  The ship lurched hard, a light fixture exploding in sparks.

“Full impulse, evasive maneuvers, pattern delta omega!”

“Lock phasers and return fire!” Chris added.  “According to the ambassadors, their shields will be the hardest to take down.”

As K’Taul had somewhat expected, the enemy ship ignored the Dragon after the initial attack, only caring about hitting the more immediate dangers, such as the standard Warbird.

Crimson beams lanced out from the Dragon as it moved past the Warbird, away from the station.  K’Taul saw on his sensors the Defiant firing torpedoes and pulse blasts, followed by disruptor blasts from the standard Warbird.  All impacted hard on the advanced Warbird’s shields, but didn’t do as much damage as he would have liked.

“The Tiaura’s shields are dropping fast,” Vendar stated.  “She’s not going to last long!”

K’Taul scowled, almost not even wanting to do anything to help them.  “All right, increase phaser yield to maximum, double the Quantum torpedo yield.  Let’s get their attention!”

No sooner did he say that then did the shields on the advanced Warbird glow bright from weapons impact.  A spread of quantum torpedoes launched out at it, and as the Dragon passed nearby, exploded with enough force to cause the ship to shudder.

After a few more passes, K’Taul quickly became disappointed.

“We’re just not causing enough damage to get their attention,” Ada said.  “And if we increase the torpedo yield more, we could risk damaging ourselves and the Defiant just as much as the Warbird.”

K’Taul scowled again, looking away from his tactical readout to the view screen.  There wasn’t a chance that they would be able to take this out in time.  The full arsenal of the Dragon, Defiant, Tiaura, and Deep Space Nine were all directed at the single Warbird, and they were barely scratching the shields.

The power that had to be used to generate those shields had to be coming directly from the artificial singularity power source, else there was no chance that power of that magnitude could be generated and regulated.

“Wait a minute,” Chris suddenly spoke up, looking up from his console as if the human expression of a light bulb appearing were true.  “The only way they could be maintaining those shields is if they had power conduits strong enough to regulate the power flow.”

K’Taul looked at him just as he looked at K’Taul.  “You’re thinking around the same lines that I am,” he commented.  “Power conduits like that had to be special made, and I’m willing to bet that they barely can regulate that power and deal with the feedback from this amount of weapons fire.”

“According to these readings,” Ada commented, “they are doing a perfectly fine job of regulating the power.  No weapons we possess can produce enough energy at this proximity to DS9 to overload the power conduits.”

Chris glanced back at her, then looked at K’Taul.  “So what we need is something that’ll feed a lot of power into their shields all at once.”

K’Taul raised his eyebrows, the answer quickly coming to him.  “Two things channel that amount of energy.  Our main navigational deflector dish and our shields.”

Chris frowned, then let a smile bloom across his face.

“Vendar, can you regulate enough power to the deflector dish to generate a pulse blast?”

Both looked back at her to see her frowning.  “I think so.  If I had time to install higher-capacity regulators, we could get more…”

“As powerful as you can get it will do,” K’Taul said, looking back down at his tactical readout.  The Tiaura’s shields weren’t going to hold out much longer.  “Make it quick.  Reroute auxiliary power to the shield grid, I want at least one hundred percent shields in the next minute.”

“James,” Chris added.  “I’m going to need you to do something we generally don’t condone.”

Not having to bother with evasive maneuvers, James turned his chair around to look back at them.  “You know me,” he said with a grin.

“I need you to lay in a course for the weakest point on the advanced Warbird’s shields and prepare to collide with them.”

K’Taul looked down at his console again to check the situation, finding that their time was quickly running short.  When he looked back up, he saw James still turned around, his jaw hung open and his face white.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” he asked.

James looked from Chris to K’Taul.  “Sir, I don’t think I can do that…”

He frowned.  “Why not?”

Chris immediately shot up from his chair.  “Don’t have time to explain, let’s just say it’s in his records.”  He moved next to James and nodded.  “I’ll take over, James.”

James looked up at him, then nodded and stood up.  Chris immediately sat down and began keying in commands.  “Course laid in.”

“Modifications completed,” Vendar added.  “Ready to go.”

“Get us into position, let me know when you’re set,” K’Taul responded, directing his orders to Chris, who immediately altered course.

After a moment, he nodded to the view screen, as if K’Taul were looking down at him from it.  “All set.”

“Engage course, three-quarters impulse power.”  He craned his neck back and added, “Vendar, initiate the pulse.”

When he looked at the view screen again, the light-blue pulse shot out from the Dragon and impacted hard on the advanced Warbird’s shields, causing them to flare to life with a brighter light than he’d ever seen.

“Impact in ten seconds!” Vendar shouted above the increasingly loud humming that the deflector was generating.  “Radiation on deck’s seven, eight, and nine and the forward section of the stardrive area is increasing, rapidly approaching dangerous levels.”

“Evacuate anyone who isn’t essential to ship operations from those areas,” K’Taul ordered.

“Five seconds!”

“All hands, brace for impact!”

Closer and closer the ship loomed, ready to rip the Dragon to shreds if their shields decided to fail at the last second.  Closer and closer…until it hit.

For a split second, K’Taul saw the Warbird’s shields flare to life, a moment later the ship lurched so hard that he found himself thrown out of his chair and back.  He swore gravity plating failed for a moment, but when it came back online, he found himself landing behind the command area, just barely missing the railing that encompassed it.  Bulk head panels and light fixtures exploded in sparks.  A part of the ceiling blew away while plasma began streaming into the bridge.  Lighting dimmed by over half as even more consoles began to flicker off and on.

After the motion from the impact finally stopped, K’Taul managed to push himself up onto his knees.  He grabbed a hold of the railing and used it to pull himself up into a standing position, more or less.  His hand reached for his forehead and pulled away with pink blood.

The sound from the damaged plasma conduit was already adding to his headache, but fortunately someone managed to shut it off.  When he looked over, however, he saw that the heavy plasma gasses were beginning to spread on the deck.  Great, that can only mean that life support is online to get rid of the plasma gas…

“Damage report,” he managed to say as he walked around the railing back to the command area.  Several of the bridge officers were trying to get up from awkward positions, two of them weren’t moving at all.

As K’Taul sat down, Chris finally managed to pull himself back into the helmsman’s chair.  “Helm controls are offline.”  A moment later, power to his console finally failed, making it go completely black.

“I’m having trouble establishing much of anything,” Vendar said from behind him.  “But from what I can tell, if it weren’t for the emergency generators around the ship, well over half of the ship would be without power.  A lot of our power grid has been damaged.”  He could hear her working furiously at her console.  “I can’t even get a power feed from engineering, there isn’t any pathway that hasn’t been damaged.”

“What about external sensors?  What’s the status of the Warbird?”

“Ummm….”  There was a momentary pause.  Then, “Brace for impact!”

K’Taul grabbed the arm rest of his chair a moment before the ship shook hard.  However, it was nothing compared to what they just went through.

“What was that, weapon’s fire?” Chris asked, standing up from the helm and moving back towards her station.

“No, it was the Warbird blowing,” she responded, much to K’Taul’s relief.  “I think that means we managed to blow out their shield grid.”

K’Taul nodded his approval.  “Good.  Continue with the damage report.”

“Major hull breaches on decks four, nine, and twelve from major EPS conduit ruptures,” she continued.  “Minor hull breaches on decks seven, eight, and fifteen.”  Suddenly, the ship shuddered again.

“What was that?” he asked, fear edging into him again.

After a moment, she replied, “Looks like our warp core was just ejected.”

He sighed and let himself ease his muscles again.  “At least those systems weren’t destroyed,” Chris commented.