Suddenly, two blue-colored balls appeared from the approaching craft, and moments later impacted on the Dragon.  The ship shook hard, causing Kirk to grab onto the railing behind the command chair to keep his footing. 

“Hull breach on decks four five and six!” Commander Perkins reported.  “Injury reports already coming in!”

Kirk looked to McCoy.  “Get down to sickbay, see if there’s anything you can do to help.”

McCoy nodded and quickly moved back around the railing and into the turbolift.  Kirk then looked at K’Taul.  “Is there anything the rest of us can do?”

K’Taul shook his head, never taking his eyes off of his console.  “I think we’re covered for now…”

The ship shook hard again, almost getting the better of Kirk again.

“I just can’t hit it with our sensor resolution this low!” tactical said.

Yet again the ship lurched hard…but a moment later, much of the bridge went silent.  “They’ve gone to warp,” Perkins stated.  “And they hit our starboard nacelle before hand.  We’re venting plasma.”

K’Taul pounded his fist on his arm rail.  “Dammit!”

“Track them!” the first officer ordered, standing up and moving towards the helm.  “What course did they set?”

There was a pause, then the helmsman responded, “heading one-five-two mark one.”

“I expected as much,” K’Taul replied, getting everyone’s attention.  “If it’s who I think it is…they’ll be heading for the Keltin sector of Klingon space…to give the Keltin family an advantage over mine…”

He looked at Kirk.  “Captain Kirk, as much as I’d like to talk to you more about the events of your time, I’d ask that you and your crew please leave the ship as soon as possible and send out that fleet wide message.  Again, we’ll contact you as soon as we have captured our vessel.”

Kirk nodded.  “Very well.”  He looked around the bridge and smiled.  “It’s nice to see that Starfleet still exists in the future…”

K’Taul nodded, not smiling, just staring at him.  “Indeed.”  He stood up and moved to Kirk, extending his hand.  “It was a pleasure to meet you in person, Captain.”

Kirk looked at the hand hesitantly, never believing that he’d one day meet a Klingon willing to shake his hand in a friendly manner.  After a moment, he looked K’Taul in the eye and took the offered hand, shaking it twice.  “Likewise.”

K’Taul snorted in annoyance when the chime rang to his ready room door.  He deactivated the monitor he was looking at and looked towards the door.  “Enter!”

The doors parted to reveal Commander Chris Harriman enter.  “Captain.”

“What is it, Commander?” he growled.

Chris shrugged and moved to K’Taul’s desk, sitting uninvited in the chair in front of it.  “I wanted to talk.  You haven’t said a word since you got back, and now come to find out that there’s a problem involved with your leave that could involve the entire Federation…”

K’Taul narrowed his eyes at Chris, trying to make him leave by will alone…but couldn’t.  “In actuality, my leave has involved both the Klingon Empire and the Federation from the very beginning.”

Chris frowned questioningly.  “How so?”

K’Taul shook his head.  “I can’t tell you.”

In response, Chris shook his head.  “Shouldn’t everyone be told about this, what ever it is?  I mean, we’re about to go chase down a Klingon in a stolen Delta Flyer and we don’t even know why!”

“Preserving the time line should be reason enough for you, Commander!”  K’Taul glared at him, becoming annoyed by his persistence.

“Look, Captain,” Chris said, slightly raising his voice.  “I don’t pretend to understand Klingons and their pride, but if there is a problem involving the Federation in our time, then I think that we should know about it!”

K’Taul bared his teeth and stood up, pounding his desk.  “Commander, I will not take that tone of voice from you!”

Chris did not cower as he had expected…one of the only humans ever to do so.  He simply sat there, staring at K’Taul.  “Then tell me, why are we even here in the first place?  Not only did your leave involve the Federation, but it looks to me that it resulted in our being stranded in the twenty third century!  I have a duty to protect this crew, just as you do!  Now what is going on here!”

He glared at Chris, the weight of his ridges making him look even angrier…he hoped.  After some consideration, however, he finally decided that he might as well tell Chris.  Slowly, K’Taul sat back down in his chair, never breaking eye contact with Chris.

“I will not tell you everything,” he said, eliciting a look of satisfaction from Chris.

“For generations,” he began, “and in fact, since around this time in history, there has been a huge feud between my family and the faction we are part of and another faction, the D’Braul faction.  Our faction has always held a strong place among the Klingon Empire…or at least, I say yet again, since this time in history.  We support the peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation.  The D’Braul…do not.”  K’Taul bared his teeth as he recalled something.  “The D’Braul were first formed around one leader, who’s name was D’Braul.  One of his first…recruits was General Chang, the same man who commanded the Bird of Prey at the Khitomer incident.”

Chris seemed to understand the situation more and more as K’Taul explained, realization slowly crossing his face.  “I’m assuming you went on leave as a result of this conflict between factions?”

K’Taul nodded his head.  “Yes.  My family had…learned about an impending attack from the D’Braul.”  Chris frowned questioningly at K’Taul’s hesitation, but he didn’t care at the moment.  “My family wanted me there to help defend against the D’Braul attack.”

Chris yet again frowned.  “So you mean that there recently has been a civil war inside of the Klingon Empire?”

K’Taul shook his head.  “Nothing so extravagant, just a couple of large battles between two warring factions.  This time, however…the D’Braul did not fare so well.  They were almost wiped out…only a few minor parts of their faction still exists.”

“So when this Klingon got onboard the Dragon and then realized what time period we were in,” Chris said, “he decided he’d try to re-write history…”

K’Taul nodded in response.  “Most likely.”

A smile spread across Chris’s face.  “Well, then, it’s a good thing we never finished repairing the communications array on the Meridian, else we wouldn’t stand a chance of preventing it…”

K’Taul frowned at Chris’s comment.  “How did the Meridian get stranded in an ion storm?”

“Some sort of natural subspace damping field in front of this storm shut down propulsion and a few other systems,” Chris replied.  “We were able to catalog the anomalous property with the Dragon later on.”

He nodded his response.  “I see…”  He looked down for a moment, then back at Chris.  “Has Vendar made any progress figuring out why we all lost consciousness?”

Chris once again nodded.  “Yeah, turns out that tachyon levels in this anomaly were higher than any other anomaly we’ve ever encountered.”  He shrugged.  “No one can figure out why, but that’s why the ship was saturated with tachyons and why we lost consciousness.  Only thing we can’t figure out now…is why that intruder didn’t lose consciousness.”

A wave of worry washed over K’Taul, but he pushed the feeling away.  “Perhaps if he survives the coming battle, we can ask him.”

Chris nodded.  “Indeed.”

“Bridge to K’Taul,” Lieutenant James Trikal’s voice came over the intercom.

“Go ahead.”

“Warp drive has been restored.  At maximum warp, it’ll take us about twelve hours to intercept the Meridian.”

K’Taul smiled, happy to finally receive some good news.  “Very well, set a course and engage.”  He then looked back at Chris.  “Inform the senior officers to begin brainstorming a way to take back the Meridian.  It’s likely that the intruder has had time to figure out some of our systems and has figured out a way to hurt us.  We’ll have a briefing in four hours.”

Chris nodded and stood up.  “Understood…and thank you.”

K’Taul nodded.  “I just expect you never to raise your voice to me like that again, Commander.”

He smiled and nodded, then left the ready room.  K’Taul was fearful of Chris now…but it would soon all be over…and hopefully no one would be the wiser about it.

“All right, we obviously first need to figure out how to hit the Meridian,” K’Taul stated, getting everyone’s attention at the briefing table.  “Obviously the pilot is skilled and can fly circles around us without getting scratched.”

“Well,” Ada began, “the problem is that he maneuvers too quickly and the ship is too small.  With the kind of maneuvers he does, on any vessel, it’d be next to impossible to hit a fixed target on that ship…and because of the Meridian’s size we just aren’t getting any lucky hits off on any part.”

“Is there a way to slow down the Meridian’s maneuvers?” Chris asked.

Ada looked at him, then half nodded and half shrugged.  “Yeah, we could establish a damping field to limit their power supply.”

K’Taul raised an eyebrow.  “But…”

She looked at him, then shook her head and sighed.  “If what you’ve told us is true, this guy’ll be smart enough to change the frequency of all of the Meridian’s systems, and the only way a damping field would work is if we had the exact frequency.”

K’Taul nodded.  “And it’d simply take too long to find out what the frequency is…and by the time we find out, he realizes it and once again changes all the frequencies.”

Ada nodded.  “Exactly.”

The room went silent as everyone considered for a moment just what could happen.  K’Taul couldn’t come up with anything…and so far no one else was either.

“Well isn’t this just like a science experiment?” Vendar suddenly asked, getting everyone’s attention.  “I mean, there are several key factors, the two highest factors being the Meridian and the Dragon.”

K’Taul was about to give a remark to her interpretation…but then recalled precisely how intelligent she was.  If she was comparing the situation to a science experiment, she’d have a good reason to do so.  Since no one else was interrupting, he assumed that they all knew that she had something in mind.

“Obviously,” Vendar continued, “we can’t change one of those two factors, or its parts: the Meridian.  So what we have to do is change the other factor, or rather a part of it, in order to get an advantage.”

K’Taul frowned, already becoming annoyed and wishing she’d just get to the point.  “What are you getting at?”

“We can’t slow the Meridian down, we’ve got to accept that,” she added.  “And we can’t speed up the processor of the targeting computer…and, as Ada said, we can’t even hit the Meridian even by a chance shot cause it is so small…but what she didn’t say was that the other reason is because our weapons’ area of effect is so small.”